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.

Two years ago, Congress passed the “Reforming Intelligence and Securing America” Act (RISAA) that included nominal reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The bill unfortunately included some problematic expansions of the law—but it also included a relatively big victory for civil liberties advocates: Section 702 authorities were only extended for two years, allowing Congress to continue the important work of negotiating a warrant requirement for Americans as well as some other critical reforms. 

However, Congress clearly did not continue this work. In fact, it now appears that Congress is poised to consider another extension of this program without even attempting to include necessary and common sense reforms. Most notably, Congress is not considering a requirement to obtain a warrant before looking at data on U.S. persons that was indiscriminately and warrantlessly collected. House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that “the plan is to move a clean extension of FISA … for at least 18 months.” 

Even more disappointing, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who has previously been a champion of both the warrant requirement and closing the data broker loophole, told the press he would vote for a clean extension of FISA, claiming that RISAA included enough reforms for the moment.

It’s important to note RISAA was just a reauthorization of this mass surveillance program with a long history of abuse. Prior to the 2024 reauthorization, Section 702 was already misused to run improper queries on peaceful protesters, federal and state lawmakers, Congressional staff, thousands of campaign donors, journalists, and a judge reporting civil rights violations by local police. RISAA further expanded the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. As we said when it passed, overall, RISAA is a travesty for Americans who deserve basic constitutional rights and privacy whether they are communicating with people and services inside or outside of the US.

Section 702 should not be reauthorized without any additional safeguards or oversight. Fortunately, there are currently three reform bills for Congress to consider: SAFE, PLEWSA, and GSRA. While none of these bills are perfect, they are all significantly better than the status quo, and should be considered instead of a bill that attempts no reform at all. 

Mass spying—accessing a massive amount of communications by and with Americans first and sorting out targets second and secretly—has always been a problem for our rights.  It was a problem at first when President George W. Bush authorized it in secret without Congressional or court oversight. And it remained a problem even after the passage of Section 702 in 2008 created the possibility of  some oversight. Congress was right that this surveillance is dangerous, and that's why it set Section 702 up for regular reconsideration. That reconsideration has not occurred, even as the circumstances of the NSA, Justice Department, and FBI leadership, have radically changed. Reform is long overdue, and now it's urgent.  

The population needs better conservation.

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.

The blobfish, once considered the ugliest animal in the world, has since had quite the redemption arc. Years after it was first discovered, scientists realized that the deep-sea creature appeared so unnervingly blobby only because it went through an extreme change in pressure when it was brought up to the surface. In its natural environment, 4,000 feet underwater, the fish looks perfectly handsome.

Structural biologists, whose goal is to deduce a molecule’s structure and function within a cell, face the risk of making a similar mistake. If biomolecular complexes are extracted from the cell, better-quality images can be obtained, but the molecules may not look natural. On the other hand, studying molecules without disrupting their environment at all is technically challenging, like filming deep underwater.

A new method, called purification-free ribosome imaging from subcellular mixtures (cryoPRISM), offers an appealing compromise. Developed by graduate students Mira May and Gabriela López-Pérez in the Davis lab in the MIT Department of Biology and recently published in PNAS, the technique allows biologists to visualize molecular complexes without taking them too far out of their natural context.

CryoPRISM captures molecular structures in cells that have just been broken open. This comes as close to preserving the natural interactions between molecules as possible, short of the extremely resource-intensive in-cell structural imaging, according to associate professor of biology Joey Davis, the faculty lead of the study.

“We think that the cryoPRISM method is a sweet spot where we preserve much of the native cellular contacts, but still have the resolution that lets us actually see molecular details,” Davis says. “Even in the extremely well-trodden system of translation in E. coli, which people have worked on for over 50 years, we are still finding new states that had just escaped people’s attention.”

A negative control that was not so negative

The development of cryoPRISM, as many discoveries in science, resulted from an unexpected observation that Mira May, the co-first author of the study, made while working on a different project.

Like all living organisms, bacteria rely on a process called translation to manufacture the proteins that carry out essential functions within the cell, from copying DNA to digesting nutrients. A key machine involved in translation is the ribosome — a biomolecular complex that assembles proteins based on instructions encoded by another molecule called mRNA. To regulate its activity, cells employ additional proteins that can change the shape of the ribosome, thus guiding its function.

May sought to identify new players in ribosomal regulation using cryoEM, by rapidly freezing lots of purified molecules and collecting thousands of 2D images to reconstruct their 3D structures. May was trying to pull ribosomes out of cells to visualize them together with their regulators. For her experiments, she designed a negative control containing unpurified bacterial lysate — a mixture of everything spilled from burst cells.

May expected to get noisy, low-quality images from this sample. To her surprise, instead, she saw intact ribosomes together with their natural interacting partners.

In just a few days, this technique experimentally validated data that would have taken months to acquire using other approaches. 

“As I found more and more ribosomal states, this project became a method, not just a one-off finding,” May recalls.

Discovering new biology in a saturated field

Once May and her colleagues were confident that cryoPRISM could detect known ribosomal states, they began searching for ones that had previously escaped detection. 

“It’s not just that we can recapitulate things that have been previously observed, but we can actually also discover novel ribosomal biology,” May says. 

One of the novel states May identified has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of translation regulation.

During active translation, bacterial ribosomes are accompanied by a group of helper proteins called elongation factors. These factors bring in the materials for protein synthesis, like tRNAs and amino acids.

When cells encounter unfavorable conditions, such as colder temperatures, they reduce translation, which means that many ribosomes are out of work. These idle, hibernating ribosomes stop decoding mRNA, and the interface where they usually interact with helper molecules gets blocked by a hibernation factor called RaiA. This protein helps idle ribosomes avoid reactivation, like a sleeping mask that prevents a person from being woken up by light.

May observed the idle ribosomal state in her data, which on its own did not surprise her – this state had been described before. What surprised her was that some inactive ribosomes were interacting not only with RaiA, but also with an elongation factor called EF-G, which in bacteria was previously believed to only interact with active ribosomes.

A similar phenomenon has been seen before in more complex organisms, but observing it in a microbe suggests that its evolutionary origin may be older than previously thought. 

“It fits an emerging model in the field, that elongation factors might bind to hibernating ribosomes to protect both the ribosome and themselves from degradation during periods of stress,” May explains. “Think of it like short-term storage.” 

An unstressed cell might quickly eliminate unneeded inactive ribosomes, but because any stressor that puts ribosomes to sleep could be temporary, the cell may prefer to hold off on destroying them. That way, the ribosomes can be quickly reactivated if conditions improve.

The future of cryoPRISM

May has already teamed up with other MIT researchers to use cryoPRISM to visualize ribosomes in cells that are notoriously difficult to work with, including pathogenic organisms, which can be challenging to culture at the scale required for particle purification, and red blood cells isolated from patients, which cannot be cultured at all.

Besides its immediate application for translation research, cryoPRISM is a stepping stone toward the broader goal of structural biology: studying biomolecules in their natural environment.

To truly learn about deep-sea fish, scientists need to look at them in the deep sea; and to learn about cellular machines, scientists need to look at them in cells. According to Davis, cryoPRISM perfectly fits into the “theme of structural biology moving closer and closer to cellular context.”

Could a three-hour workshop on an advanced materials analysis technique turn someone into a detective — or perhaps an art restorer?

At MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) in late January, about a dozen students explored that possibility during an Independent Activities Period (IAP) workshop on Raman spectroscopy, a technique that uses laser light to “fingerprint” materials. The session even featured a robotic dog equipped with sensing equipment, demonstrating how chemical analysis can be done remotely.

The workshop, led by MIT postdoc Lamyaa Almehmadi in collaboration with the CBA, introduced participants to a powerful technique now used by law enforcement and first responders to identify narcotics and explosives, by gemologists to authenticate precious stones, and pharmaceutical companies to verify raw materials and ensure product quality. CBA graduate researcher Jiaming Liu co-hosted, delivering lectures, demonstrating Raman equipment, and contributing to the curriculum and hands-on demonstrations.

“It can open up new possibilities for innovation across many fields,” said Almehmadi, an analytical chemist in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). After attendees learned the fundamentals, she encouraged them to think creatively about new applications: “My hope is to inspire all of you to think about doing something with Raman spectroscopy that no one has done before.”

Fingerprinting materials

Participants brought items to class to analyze using handheld devices, which fire laser light and measure how it bounces back. The resulting pattern behaves like a molecular fingerprint, identifying the materials in the item — whether it’s a paper clip, a piece of tree bark, or a mixing bowl.

Workshop attendee Sarah Ciriello, an administrative assistant at DMSE who brought a stone she found at the beach, was taken aback by the results. The Raman device suggested a 39 percent probability that the sample contained concrete-like material, with the remaining readings matching synthetic compounds — blurring the line between natural and manufactured materials.

“It’s man-made — I was surprised,” Ciriello said.

Developed in 1928 by Indian scientist C.V. Raman, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Raman spectroscopy was groundbreaking because it used visible light to probe materials without destroying them, a major advantage over other techniques at the time, such as chromatography or mass spectrometry. But for decades, the Raman signal — the light scattered back from a sample — was weak, and the instruments were big and bulky, limiting its practical use.

Advances in lasers, computing power, and miniaturized optics have transformed Raman spectroscopy into a portable tool. Today’s handheld devices can instantly compare a sample’s molecular fingerprint against vast digital libraries, allowing users to identify thousands of materials in seconds. Because it doesn’t destroy the sample, Raman is especially useful in fields that require preserving materials — such as law enforcement, where evidence must remain intact, and art restoration.

Almehmadi’s own research focuses on advancing Raman spectroscopy by developing highly sensitive, semiconductor-based sensors that make portable chemical analysis possible, with applications ranging from medical diagnostics to forensic and environmental monitoring.

“Raman can be used to analyze any material,” Almehmadi says. “That’s why I decided to introduce it to students from diverse backgrounds.”

IAP classes are open to students and staff across MIT, and the Raman workshop reflected that range — from administrative staff to graduate and undergraduate students and postdocs in departments and labs including DMSE, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Media Lab, and the Broad Institute.

Walking the robot dog

A crowd-pleasing element in the workshop was the integration of a robot dog that belongs to the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). The demonstration highlighted how Raman technology can be used in dangerous environments, such as crime scenes or toxic industrial sites.

The handheld device was secured to the robot using tape, and Almehmadi showed how she could navigate the dog to a plastic bag filled with a white powder — baking soda.

But in a real-world scenario, “How can we know if it is baking soda or not?” she says. “So we just shined the light, and then the instrument told us what it was.”

Participants used a Wi-Fi app on their phones to view the results and a small remote controller to operate the robotic dog themselves.

“I loved the robot dog,” Ciriello says. “I was able to control it a bit, but it was challenging because the gauge was really sensitive.”

Michael Kitcher, a postdoc in DMSE, also praises the robot demonstration.

“Given that we just duct taped the device onto the dog — it was cool to see it actually worked,” he says.

Looking ahead

Kitcher, who researches magnetic materials for electronic applications, joined the workshop to learn more about Raman spectroscopy, which he had read about but never used. He was impressed by its versatility — in addition to the beach stone and baking soda, the device identified materials in a contact lens, cosmetics, and even a diamond.

Although it struggled to analyze a piece of chocolate he brought — other signals from the chocolate interfered — Kitcher sees strong potential for his own research. One area he’s interested in is unconventional magnetic materials, such as altermagnets, with unusual magnetic behavior that researchers hope to better understand and control for more energy-efficient electronics.

“Over the last couple of years, people have been trying to get a better sense of why these materials behave the way they do — how we can control this unconventional magnetic order,” he says. Raman spectroscopy can probe the vibrations of atoms in a material, helping researchers detect patterns in the crystal structure that underlie unusual magnetic behaviors. By understanding these vibrations, scientists could unlock material design rules that enable ultra-fast, low-energy computing.

Hands-on workshops like this — that inspire innovative future applications — Almehmadi says, are at the heart of an MIT education.

“I’ve always learned best by doing,” she says. “Lectures and reading are important, but real understanding comes from hands-on experience.”

Weekends at MIT are often a time for students to catch up on sleep or finish p-sets, lab work, and other school assignments. But for more than two decades, through a student-driven initiative supported by the Division of Student Life (DSL), students have been able to find welcoming activities designed to build community on Friday and Saturday nights through Weekends@MIT. All events are open to both graduate and undergraduate students.

At the heart of Weekends@MIT is a leadership team within the Wellbeing Ambassadors program. Ten leadership team members plan and host a variety of events from 9 to 11 p.m. in the MIT Wellbeing Lab, transforming the space into a hub for connection and creativity. While DSL staff provide advising, logistical support, and funding, event ideas come from students. Club members are committed to facilitating student social activities, all while increasing health awareness.

Student-led activities

Student ownership is intentional, says Robyn Priest, an assistant dean in the Division of Student Life. “All the ideas for activities come from the students. Leaders brainstorm themes, vote on their favorite concepts, and spearhead events in small teams. The only criterion is that it be substance-free. The students involved are dedicated, and the time commitment can be significant, so they are paid. But our students consistently step up, motivated by the opportunity to create experiences for their peers.”

Past events have included craft nights with boba tea, yoga, trivia competitions, bracelet-making workshops, waffle nights with customizable toppings, and even Spooky Skate, a Halloween costume ice-skating event hosted by the club in the Z Center.

Priest notes that just this past fall semester, more than 2,000 students attended the Friday night events, with many programs designed as drop-in experiences so students can participate around their busy schedules.

“I joined Weekends@MIT because I really liked the idea of helping organize activities on campus that promoted well-being for students and provided them with chill events that they can attend to build community and feel good on Friday nights,” says junior Emily Crespin Guerra.

Senior Ruting Hung adds, “I wanted to become more involved in promoting wellness on campus. Since then, I've found that it has also served as a way for me to recharge after a long week.”

Expanding Saturday events

Saturdays bring additional variety through collaborations with student clubs and groups. Organizations can apply for funding — typically several hundred dollars — to host events between 9 and 11 p.m. that are open to all students.

Undergraduate and graduate organizations, cultural groups, and hobby-based clubs have all contributed to programming. The partnerships also introduce new audiences to the Wellbeing Lab, helping the space become a familiar and welcoming destination across campus communities.

Connecting the campus through communication

Another key component of Weekends@MIT is a weekly newsletter distributed to thousands of students. The newsletter highlights upcoming programs in the Wellbeing Lab, along with other campus events that align with the initiative’s goals of connection and community without alcohol.

First-year student Vivian Dinh notes, “I love how the events provide a fun escape from the stress of classes and problem sets. The Wellbeing Lab is such a nice facility on campus for students to relax and enjoy themselves.”

A long tradition, evolving for the future

The current initiative builds on a long history of student-led weekend programming that began more than 20 years ago. Over time, the effort has evolved — from early safety campaigns to today’s comprehensive model focused on well-being, belonging, and social connection — but the core idea remains the same: students creating healthy spaces for other students.

Looking ahead, Weekends@MIT aims to continue expanding collaborations and exploring new ways to bring communities together on weekends. Additional events for this semester include: pupusas; blitz chess tournament with the Chess Club; craft night; movies and waffles; mocktails and latte art; a Bob Ross paint night, and much more.

EFF joined other digital rights and civil liberties organizations in calling out the unconstitutionality of Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s recent threats to punish broadcasters for airing statements he disagrees with. 

Carr’s recent threats, like his past threats, are unconstitutional efforts to coerce news coverage that favors President Donald Trump. He wrongly claims that the FCC’s “public interest” standard allows him and the commission to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who publish news that is unflattering to the government is anathema to our country’s core constitutional values. 

The First Amendment constrains the FCC’s authority to force broadcasters to toe the government’s line, even though broadcast licensees are required to operate in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” Imposing restrictions on licensees’ speech, especially viewpoint-based limitations, are still subject to First Amendment scrutiny even if, in some circumstances, that scrutiny differs somewhat from that applied to non-broadcast media. And the “public interest” requirement, as it were, has never been interpreted to allow the type of viewpoint-based punishment that Carr has threatened here.  

Everyone agrees that news reporting should strive for accuracy, but Carr’s threats have little do with that. Instead, his allegations of "falsity" are a proxy for retaliation based on (1) Carr’s subjective policy disagreements; (2) any criticism of Trump and the administration broadly; (3) treatment of anything that is not the official US government line about the Iran War as “false.” 

We join the call for Carr to withdraw these threats.

 

• Civil Society Letter to FCC Chairman Barr

Who benefits from artificial intelligence? This basic question, which has been especially salient during the AI surge of the last few years, was front and center at a conference at MIT on Wednesday, as speakers and audience members grappled with the many dimensions of AI’s impact.

In one of the conferences’s keynote talks, journalist Karen Hao ’15 called for an altered trajectory of AI development, including a move away from the massive scale-up of data use, data centers, and models being used to develop tools under the rubric of “artificial general intelligence.”

“This scale is unnecessary,” said Hao, who has become a prominent voice in AI discussions. “You do not need this scale of AI and compute to realize the benefits.” Indeed, she added, “If we really want AI to be broadly beneficial, we urgently need to shift away from this approach.”

Hao is a former staff member at The Wall Street Journal and MIT Technology Review, and author of the 2025 book, “Empire of AI.” She has reported extensively on the growth of the AI industry.

In her remarks, Hao outlined the astonishing size of datasets now being used by the biggest AI firms to develop large language models. She also emphasized some of the tradeoffs in this scale-up, such as the massive energy consumption and emissions of hyper-scale data centers, which also consume large amounts of water. Drawing on her own reporting, Hao also noted the human toll from the input work that global gig-economy employees do, inputting data manually for the hyper-scale models.

By contrast, Hao offered, an alternate path for AI might exist in the example of AlphaFold, the Nobel Prize-winning tool used to identify protein structures. This represents the concept of the “small, task-specific AI model tackling a well-scoped problem that lends itself to the computational strengths of AI,” Hao said.

She added: “It’s trained on highly curated data sets that only have to do with the problem at hand: protein folding and amino acid sequences. … There’s no need for fast supercomputing because the datasets are small, the model is small, and it’s still unlocking enormous benefit.”

In a second keynote address, scholar Paola Ricaurte underscored the desirability of purpose-driven AI approaches, outlining a number of conceptual keys to evaluating the usefulness of AI.

“There is no sense in having technologies that are not going to respond to the communities that are going to use them,” said Ricaurte.

She is a professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico and a faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Ricaurte has also served on expert committees such as the Global Partnership for AI, UNESCO’s AI Ethics Experts Without Borders, and the Women for Ethical AI project.

The event was hosted by the MIT Program in Women’s and Gender Studies. Manduhai Buyandelger, the program’s director and a professor of anthropology, provided introductory remarks.

Titled “Gender, Empire, and AI: Symposium and Design Workshop,” the event was held in the conference space at the MIT Schwartzman College of Computing, with over 300 people in attendance for the keynote talks. There was also a segment of the event devoted to discussion groups, and an afternoon session on design, in a half-dozen different subject areas.

In her talk, Hao decried the often-vague nature of AI discourse, suggesting it impedes a more thoughtful discussion about the industry’s direction.

“Part of the challenge in talking about AI is the complete lack of specificity in the term ‘artificial intelligence,’” Hao said. “It’s like the word ‘transportation.’ You could be referring to anything from a bicycle to a rocket.” As a result, she said, “when we talk about accessing its benefits, we actually have to be very specific. Which AI technologies are we talking about, and which ones do we want more of?”

In her view, the smaller-sized tools — more akin to the bicycle, by analogy — are more useful on an everyday basis. As another example, Hao mentioned the project Climate Change AI, focused on tools that can help improve the energy efficiency of buildings, track emissions, optimize supply chains, forecast extreme weather, and more.

“This is the vision of AI that we should be building towards,” Hao said.

In conclusion, Hao encouraged audience members to be active participants in AI-related discourse and projects, saying the trajectory of the technology was not yet fixed, and that public interventions matter.

Citing the writer Rebecca Solnit, Hao suggested to the audience that “Hope locates itself in the premise that we don’t know what will happen, and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.” She also noted, “Each and every one of you has an active role to play in shaping technology development.”

Ricaurte, similarly, encouraged attendees to be proactive participants in AI matters, noting that technologies will work best when the pressing everyday needs of all citizens are addressed.

“We have the responsibility to make hope possible,” Ricaurte said.

MIT Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai, who has led The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory since 2009, will step down from the role of director at the end of the academic year in May. Her decision frees her to focus exclusively on her academic work, including her continued leadership of MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative and the Alana Down Syndrome Center. Meanwhile, the search for the Picower Institute’s next director has begun.

“During her exceptional 16-year tenure in the role of director, Li-Huei has led substantial growth at the Picower Institute,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble professor of astrophysics. “She has markedly expanded the faculty — eight of the current 16 labs joined Picower under her directorship — through successful recruitment of highly talented neuroscientists. She has done this, and more, all while leading one of our most productive and influential labs, working on a quintessentially grand challenge in human health: combating Alzheimer’s disease.”

To conduct the search for a new Picower Institute director, Mavalvala has appointed a committee led by Sherman Fairchild Professor Matthew Wilson, associate director of the institute. Serving with Wilson are Picower Professor and former institute director Mark Bear, Menicon Professor Troy Littleton, Assistant Professor Sara Prescott, and Professor Fan Wang. They will identify and interview candidates, producing a report to Mavalvala later this spring.

Growing an institute

Tsai, a professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, says she is grateful to have had the opportunity to build the Picower Institute into a preeminent center for neuroscience research.

“I’m immensely proud of what our institute represents: world-renowned neuroscience research that is creative, rigorous, novel, and impactful,” Tsai says. “Our labs produce innovations, discoveries, and often translational strategies that have broken new ground and pushed science, medicine, and technology forward. We also provide excellent training that has enabled us to launch the careers of many of the field’s new and future leaders. It has been a tremendous honor to be able to build on the incredible foundation and inspiration provided by my predecessors Susumu Tonegawa and Mark Bear to enable the institute’s growth and success.”

Founded by Tonegawa as the Center for Learning and Memory in 1994, and then renamed The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory after a transformative gift by Barbara and Jeffry Picower in 2002, the institute now comprises about 400 scientists, students, and staff across 16 labs in MIT’s buildings 46 and 68.

But when Tsai became director in July 2009, just three years after coming to MIT from Harvard Medical School, the Picower Institute was a smaller enterprise of 11 labs, and a community closer to 200 members. Over the ensuing years, Tsai worked closely with the Picowers’ foundation, formerly the JPB Foundation and now the Freedom Together Foundation, to develop several strategic initiatives to accelerate growth and enhance research productivity. These have included programs specifically designed to support junior faculty, to catalyze more applications for more private grant funding, and to sustain fellowships for more than 18 postdocs and graduate students. Working with the foundation, she has also expanded the scope of research support provided by the Picower Institute Innovation Fund begun under Bear.

Eager to galvanize colleagues across MIT in fighting neurodegenerative diseases and neurological disorders affecting cognition, Tsai also built and launched two campus-wide initiatives: The Aging Brain Initiative, founded in 2015 and sustained by a broad coalition of donors, and the Alana Down Syndrome Center, established in 2019 with a gift from The Alana Foundation.

Research focus

As the Picower Institute has grown, Tsai’s research has, too. In work spanning molecular, cellular, circuit, and network scales in the brain, Tsai has led numerous highly cited discoveries about the neurobiology of Alzheimer’s disease and has translated several of these insights into specific therapeutic strategies, including one now undergoing a national phase III clinical trial. In all, she has published more than 230 peer-reviewed neuroscience studies, generated numerous patents, and helped launch several startups. She has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors, and received awards including the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award and the Hans Wigzell Prize.

Tsai’s earliest discoveries identified key roles in neurodegeneration for the enzyme CDK5. She has pioneered understanding of how epigenetic changes in brain cells affect Alzheimer’s pathology and memory. Her work has also highlighted a critical role for DNA double-strand breaks in disease.

In more recent work, Tsai’s lab has conducted several studies using innovative human stem-cell-based cultures to advance understanding of how the biggest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s (a gene variant called APOE4) contributes to pathology, and how some existing medications and supplements might help. In collaboration with MIT professor of computer science Manolis Kellis, she has also published several sweeping atlases documenting how gene expression and epigenetics differ in Alzheimer’s disease. These studies have provided the field with troves of new data and have yielded new insights into what makes the brain vulnerable to disease, and what helps some people remain resilient.

Tsai has also led a collaboration with professors Emery N. Brown and Edward S. Boyden that’s discovered a potential noninvasive, device-based treatment for Alzheimer’s and possibly other neurological disorders. Called “Gamma Entrainment Using Sensory Stimuli” (GENUS), the technology stimulates the senses (vision, hearing, or touch) to increase the power and synchrony of 40Hz frequency “gamma” waves in the brain. Numerous studies, involving either lab animals or human volunteers by her group and others, have shown that the approach can preserve brain volume and learning and memory and reduce signs of Alzheimer’s pathology. Via an MIT spinoff company, the technology has now advanced to pivotal clinical trial enrolling hundreds of people around the country.

“After 16 years leading the Picower Institute, I’m now eager to sharpen my focus on advancing human health through the work in my lab, the Aging Brain Initiative, and the Alana Center,” Tsai says.

The following is a joint announcement from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Hasso Plattner Institute, and Hasso Plattner Foundation.

The MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), and Hasso Plattner Foundation celebrated the launch of the MIT and HPI AI and Creativity Hub (MHACH) at a signing ceremony this week. This 10-year initiative aims to deepen ties between computing and design as advances in artificial intelligence are reshaping how ideas are conceived and shared.

Funded by the Hasso Plattner Foundation, MIT and HPI will work together to foster collaborative interdisciplinary research and support a portfolio of educational programs, fellowships, and faculty engagement focused on AI and creativity, expanding scholarly inquiry into AI applications across disciplines, industries, and societal challenges. The collaboration begins with an inaugural two-day workshop March 19-20 at MIT, bringing together faculty, students, and researchers to set early priorities.

“As we hear from our faculty, as the Information Age gives way to an era of imagination, we expect a new emphasis on human creativity,” reflects MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “Through this collaboration, MIT and HPI are creating a shared space where students and faculty will come together across disciplines to explore new ideas, experiment with emerging tools, and invent new frontiers at the intersection of human creativity and AI.”

“The best minds need the right environment to do their most creative work,” says Rouven Westphal, from the Hasso Plattner Foundation. “When HPI and MIT come together across disciplines and borders, they create exactly that. The Hasso Plattner Foundation is committed to supporting this collaboration for the long term, building on Hasso Plattner’s vision of uniting technological excellence with human-centered design and creativity.”

Deepening collaboration at the intersection of technology, creativity, and societal impact

Building on the success of the Hasso Plattner Institute-MIT Research Program on Designing for Sustainability, established in 2022 between MIT MAD and HPI, the new MHACH hub represents a commitment to deepen collaboration at the intersection of technology, creativity, and societal impact.

“MIT and HPI share a common commitment to turning scientific excellence into real-world impact. Through this collaboration, we will create an environment where students and researchers from both sides of the Atlantic can work together, experiment across disciplines, and learn from one another — at a time when artificial intelligence is set to profoundly shape our lives. We are convinced that this collaboration will generate ideas with impact far beyond both institutions and inspire international cooperation and innovation,” says Professor Tobias Friedrich, dean and managing director of the Hasso Plattner Institute.

“HPI and MIT exist at the nexus of technology and creativity. Expanding this dynamic relationship will generate new paths for the infusion of AI, design, and creativity, enabling students, faculty, and researchers to dream and discover novel solutions, moving more quickly than ever from idea to implementation. MAD was established to connect thinkers across and beyond the Institute, and this new era of collaboration with HPI advances that mission on a global scale,” comments Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and the Elizabeth and James Killian (1926) Professor.

Academic leadership from MIT and HPI will jointly shape the hub’s research and teaching agenda. Based in Potsdam, Germany, HPI is a center of excellence for digital engineering advancing research, education, and societal transfer in IT systems engineering, data engineering, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, and digital health. Through its globally recognized HPI d-school and pioneering work in design thinking methodology, HPI brings a distinctive perspective on human-centered innovation to the collaboration, alongside a strong record in AI and data science research and technology transfer.

Expanding research and education on AI and creativity

The efforts of this multifaceted initiative are intended to foster a dynamic academic community spanning MIT and HPI, anchored by Hasso Plattner–named professorships and graduate fellowships whose recipients will be actively engaged in the hub. The long-term framework is designed to provide continuity for faculty appointments, doctoral training, and cross-campus research.

The agreement also includes the development of classes and educational programs in areas of shared AI focus, along with expanded experiential opportunities through AI-focused workshops, hackathons, and summer exchanges. A steering committee composed of representatives from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and Hasso Plattner Institute will facilitate the shared governance of MHACH.

“Creativity has always been about extending human capability. At its core, this collaboration asks what it truly means to create something new. The question isn’t whether AI diminishes creativity, but how new forms of intelligence can deepen and enrich that process. Our goal is to explore that intersection with rigor and build a cross-disciplinary scholarly and research community that shapes how AI supports the creation of new ideas and knowledge,” says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

This collaboration is made possible by the Hasso Plattner Foundation’s long-term philanthropic commitment to institutions that connect technological innovation with design thinking and education. The Hasso Plattner Foundation has played a central role in establishing and supporting institutions such as the Hasso Plattner Institute and international design thinking programs that bridge disciplines and geographies.

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