Vivian Chinoda ’25, Alice Hall, Sofia Lara, and Sophia Wang ’24 have been selected as 2026 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford in the U.K. next fall. Hall, Lara, and Wang, are U.S. Rhodes Scholars; Chinoda was awarded the Rhodes Zimbabwe Scholarship.

The scholars were supported by Associate Dean Kim Benard and the Distinguished Fellowships team in Career Advising and Professional Development. They received additional mentorship and guidance from the Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships.

“MIT students never cease to amaze us with their creativity, vision, and dedication,” says Professor Taylor Perron, who co-chairs the committee along with Professor Nancy Kanwisher. “This is especially true of this year’s Rhodes scholars. It’s remarkable how they are simultaneously so talented in their respective fields and so adept at communicating their goals to the world. I look forward to seeing how these outstanding young leaders shape the future. It’s an honor to work with such talented students.”

Vivian Chinoda ’25

Vivian Chinoda, from Harare, Zimbabwe, was named a Rhodes Zimbabwe Scholar on Oct. 10. Chinoda graduated this spring with a BS in business analytics. At Oxford, she hopes to pursue the MSc in social data science and a master’s degree in public policy.  Chinoda aims to foster economic development and equitable resource access for Zimbabwean communities by promoting social innovation and evidence-based policy.

At MIT, Chinoda researched the impacts of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation on stakeholders and key indicators, such as innovation, with the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. She supported the Digital Humanities Lab and MIT Ukraine in building a platform to connect and fundraise for exiled Ukrainian scientists. With the MIT Office of Sustainability, Chinoda co-led the plan for a campus transition to a fully electric vehicle fleet, advancing the Institute’s Climate Action Plan.

Chinoda’s professional experience includes roles as a data science and research intern at Adaviv (a controlled-environment agriculture startup) and a product manager at Red Hat, developing AI tools for open-source developers.

Beyond academics, Chinoda served as first-year outreach chair and vice president of the African Students’ Association, where she co-founded the Impact Fund, raising over $30,000 to help members launch social impact initiatives in their countries. She was a scholar in the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) program, studying big-data ethics across sectors like criminal justice and health care, and a PKG social impact internship participant. Chinoda also enjoys fashion design, which she channeled into reviving the MIT Black Theatre Guild, earning her the 2025 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award.

Alice Hall

Alice Hall is a senior from Philadelphia studying chemical engineering with a minor in Spanish. At Oxford, she will earn a DPhil in engineering, focusing on scaling sustainable heating and cooling technologies. She is passionate about bridging technology, leadership, and community to address the climate crisis.

Hall’s research journey began in the Lienhard Group, developing computational and techno-economic models of electrodialysis for nutrient reclamation from brackish groundwater. She then worked in the Langer Lab, investigating alveolar-capillary barrier function to enhance lung viability for transplantation. During a summer in Madrid, she collaborated with the European Space Agency to optimize surface treatments for satellite materials.

Hall’s current research in the Olivetti Group, as part of the MIT Climate Project, examines the manufacturing scalability of early-stage clean energy solutions. Hall has gained industry experience through internships with Johnson and Johnson and Procter and Gamble.

Hall represents the student body as president of MIT’s Undergraduate Association. She also serves on the Presidential Advisory Cabinet, the executive boards of the Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Student Advisory Board and MIT’s chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee, the Compton Lectures Advisory Committee, and the MIT Alumni Association Board of Directors as an invited guest.

She is an active member of the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program, the Black Students’ Union, and the National Society of Black Engineers. As a member of the varsity basketball team, she earned both NEWMAC and D3hoops.com Region 2 Rookie of the Year honors in 2023.

Sofia Lara

Hailing from Los Angeles, Sofia Lara is a senior majoring in biological engineering with a minor in Spanish. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, she will pursue a DPhil in clinical medicine, leveraging UK biobank data to develop sex-stratified dosing protocols and safety guidelines for the NHS.

Lara aspires to transform biological complexity from medicine’s blind spots into a therapeutic superpower where variability reveals hidden possibilities and precision medicine becomes truly precise.

At the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Lara investigates the cGAS-STING immune pathway in cancer. Her thesis, a comprehensive genome-wide association study illuminating the role of STING variation in disease pathology, aims to expand understanding of STING-linked immune disorders.

Lara co-founded the MIT-Harvard Future of Biology Conference, convening multidisciplinary researchers to interrogate vulnerabilities in cancer biology. As president of MIT Baker House, she steered community initiatives and executed the legendary Piano Drop, mobilizing hundreds of students in an enduring ritual of collective resilience. Lara captains the MIT Archery Team, serves as music director for MIT Catholic Community, and channels empathy through hand-stitched crocheted octopuses for pediatric patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Sophia Wang ’24

Sophia Wang, from Woodbridge, Connecticut, graduated with a BS in aerospace engineering and a concentration in the design of highly autonomous systems. At Oxford, she will pursue an MSc in mathematical and theoretical physics, followed by an MSc in global governance and diplomacy.

As an undergraduate, Wang conducted research with the MIT Space Telecommunications Astronomy Radiation (STAR) Lab and the MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group and Center for Bits and Atoms. She also interned at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on engineering projects for exoplanet detection missions, the Mars Sample Return mission, and terrestrial proofs-of-concept for self-assembly in space.

Since graduating from MIT, Wang has been engaged in a number of projects. In Bhutan, she contributes to national technology policy centered on mindful development. In Japan, she is a founding researcher at the Henkaku Center, where she is creating an international network of academic institutions. As a venture capitalist, she recently worked with commercial space stations on the effort to replace the International Space Station, which will decommission in 2030. Wang’s creative prototyping tools, such as a modular electromechanical construction kit, are used worldwide through the Fab Foundation, a network of 2,500+ community digital fabrication labs.

An avid cook, Wang created with friends Mince, a pop-up restaurant that serves fine-dining meals to MIT students. Through MIT Global Teaching Labs, Wang taught STEM courses in Kazakhstan and Germany, and she taught digital fabrication and 3D printing workshops across the U.S. as a teacher and cyclist with MIT Spokes. 

A new research paper documents the outcomes of five volunteers who continued to receive 40Hz light and sound stimulation for around two years after participating in an MIT early-stage clinical study of the potential Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapy. The results show that for the three participants with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, several measures of cognition remained significantly higher than comparable Alzheimer’s patients in national databases. Moreover, in the two late-onset volunteers who donated plasma samples, levels of Alzheimer’s biomarker tau proteins were significantly decreased.

The three volunteers who experienced these benefits were all female. The two other participants, each of whom were males with early-onset forms of the disease, did not exhibit significant benefits after two years. The dataset, while small, represents the longest-term test so far of the safe, noninvasive treatment method (called GENUS, for gamma entrainment using sensory stimuli), which is also being evaluated in a nationwide clinical trial run by MIT-spinoff company Cognito Therapeutics.

“This pilot study assessed the long-term effects of daily 40Hz multimodal GENUS in patients with mild AD,” the authors wrote in an open-access paper in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. “We found that daily 40Hz audiovisual stimulation over 2 years is safe, feasible, and may slow cognitive decline and biomarker progression, especially in late-onset AD patients.”

Diane Chan, a former research scientist in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the study’s lead and co-corresponding author. Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai, director of The Picower Institute and the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT, is the study’s senior and co-corresponding author.

An “open label” extension

In 2020, MIT enrolled 15 volunteers with mild Alzheimer’s disease in an early-stage trial to evaluate whether an hour a day of 40Hz light and sound stimulation, delivered via an LED panel and speaker in their homes, could deliver clinically meaningful benefits. Several studies in mice had shown that the sensory stimulation increases the power and synchrony of 40Hz gamma frequency brain waves, preserves neurons and their network connections, reduces Alzheimer’s proteins such as amyloid and tau, and sustains learning and memory. Several independent groups have also made similar findings over the years.

MIT’s trial, though cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, found significant benefits after three months. The new study examines outcomes among five volunteers who continued to use their stimulation devices on an “open label” basis for two years. These volunteers came back to MIT for a series of tests 30 months after their initial enrollment. Because four participants started the original trial as controls (meaning they initially did not receive 40Hz stimulation), their open label usage was six to nine months shorter than the 30-month period.

The testing at zero, three, and 30 months of enrollment included measurements of their brain wave response to the stimulation, MRI scans of brain volume, measures of sleep quality, and a series of five standard cognitive and behavioral tests. Two participants gave blood samples. For comparison to untreated controls, the researchers combed through three national databases of Alzheimer’s patients, matching thousands of them on criteria such as age, gender, initial cognitive scores, and retests at similar time points across a 30-month span.

Outcomes and outlook

The three female late-onset Alzheimer’s volunteers showed improvement or slower decline on most of the cognitive tests, including significantly positive differences compared to controls on three of them. These volunteers also showed increased brain-wave responsiveness to the stimulation at 30 months and showed improvement in measures of circadian rhythms. In the two late-onset volunteers who gave blood samples, there were significant declines in phosphorylated tau (47 percent for one and 19.4 percent for the other) on a test recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the first plasma biomarker for diagnosing Alzheimer’s.

“One of the most compelling findings from this study was the significant reduction of plasma pTau217, a biomarker strongly correlated with AD pathology, in the two late-onset patients in whom follow-up blood samples were available,” the authors wrote in the journal. “These results suggest that GENUS could have direct biological impacts on Alzheimer’s pathology, warranting further mechanistic exploration in larger randomized trials.”

Although the initial trial results showed preservation of brain volume at three months among those who received 40Hz stimulation, that was not significant at the 30-month time point. And the two male early-onset volunteers did not show significant improvements on cognitive test scores. Notably, the early onset patients showed significantly reduced brain-wave responsiveness to the stimulation.

Although the sample is small, the authors hypothesize that the difference between the two sets of patients is likely attributable to the difference in disease onset, rather than the difference in gender.

“GENUS may be less effective in early onset Alzheimer’s disease patients, potentially owing to broad pathological differences from late-onset Alzheimer’s disease that could contribute to differential responses,” the authors wrote. “Future research should explore predictors of treatment response, such as genetic and pathological markers.”

Currently, the research team is studying whether GENUS may have a preventative effect when applied before disease onset. The new trial is recruiting participants aged 55-plus with normal memory who have or had a close family member with Alzheimer's disease, including early-onset.

In addition to Chan and Tsai, the paper’s other authors are Gabrielle de Weck, Brennan L. Jackson, Ho-Jun Suk, Noah P. Milman, Erin Kitchener, Vanesa S. Fernandez Avalos, MJ Quay, Kenji Aoki, Erika Ruiz, Andrew Becker, Monica Zheng, Remi Philips, Rosalind Firenze, Ute Geigenmüller, Bruno Hammerschlag, Steven Arnold, Pia Kivisäkk, Michael Brickhouse, Alexandra Touroutoglou, Emery N. Brown, Edward S. Boyden, Bradford C. Dickerson, and Elizabeth B. Klerman.

Funding for the research came from the Freedom Together Foundation, the Robert A. and Renee E. Belfer Family Foundation, the Eleanor Schwartz Charitable Foundation, the Dolby Family, Che King Leo, Amy Wong and Calvin Chin, Kathleen and Miguel Octavio, the Degroof-VM Foundation, the Halis Family Foundation, Chijen Lee, Eduardo Eurnekian, Larry and Debora Hilibrand, Gary Hua and Li Chen, Ko Han Family, Lester Gimpelson, David B Emmes, Joseph P. DiSabato and Nancy E. Sakamoto, Donald A. and Glenda G. Mattes, the Carol and Gene Ludwig Family Foundation, Alex Hu and Anne Gao, Elizabeth K. and Russell L. Siegelman, the Marc Haas Foundation, Dave and Mary Wargo, James D. Cook, and the Nobert H. Hardner Foundation.

Shining a light on the critical role of mentors in a postdoc’s career, the MIT Postdoctoral Association presented the fourth annual Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring Awards to professors John Marshall and Erin Kara.

The awards honor faculty and principal investigators who have distinguished themselves across four areas: the professional development opportunities they provide, the work environment they create, the career support they provide, and their commitment to continued professional relationships with their mentees. 

They were presented at the annual Postdoctoral Appreciation event hosted by the Office of the Vice President for Research (VPR), on Sept. 17.

An MIT Postdoctoral Association (PDA) committee, chaired this year by Danielle Coogan, oversees the awards process in coordination with VPR and reviews nominations by current and former postdocs. “[We’re looking for] someone who champions a researcher, a trainee, but also challenges them,” says Bettina Schmerl, PDA president in 2024-25. “Overall, it’s about availability, reasonable expectations, and empathy. Someone who sees the postdoctoral scholar as a person of their own, not just someone who is working for them.” Marshall’s and Kara’s steadfast dedication to their postdocs set them apart, she says.

Speaking at the VPR resource fair during National Postdoc Appreciation Week, Vice President for Research Ian Waitz acknowledged “headwinds” in federal research funding and other policy issues, but urged postdocs to press ahead in conducting the very best research. “Every resource in this room is here to help you succeed in your path,” he said.

Waitz also commented on MIT’s efforts to strengthen postdoctoral mentoring over the last several years, and the influence of these awards in bringing lasting attention to the importance of mentoring. “The dossiers we’re getting now to nominate people [for the awards] may have five, 10, 20 letters of support,” he noted. “What we know about great mentoring is that it carries on between academic generations. If you had a great mentor, then you are more likely to be an amazing mentor once you’ve seen it demonstrated.”

Ann Skoczenski, director of MIT Postdoctoral Services, works closely with Waitz and the Postdoctoral Association to address the goals and concerns of MIT’s postdocs to ensure a successful experience at the Institute. “The PDA and the whole postdoctoral community do critical work at MIT, and it’s a joy to recognize them and the outstanding mentors who guide them,” said Skoczenski.

A foundation in good science

The awards recognize excellent mentors in two categories. Marshall, professor of oceanography in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, received the “Established Mentor Award.” 

Nominators described Marshall’s enthusiasm for research as infectious, creating an exciting work environment that sets the tone. “John’s mentorship is unique in that he immerses his mentees in the heart of cutting-edge research. His infectious curiosity and passion for scientific excellence make every interaction with him a thrilling and enriching experience,” one postdoc wrote.

At the heart of Marshall’s postdoc relationships is a straightforward focus on doing good science and working alongside postdocs and students as equals. As one nominator wrote, “his approach is centered on empowering his mentees to assume full responsibility for their work, engage collaboratively with colleagues, and make substantial contributions to the field of science.” 

His high expectations are matched by the generous assistance he provides his postdocs when needed. “He balances scientific rigor with empathy, offers his time generously, and treats his mentees as partners in discovery,” a nominator wrote.

Navigating career decisions and gaining the right experience along the way are important aspects of the postdoc experience. “When it was time for me to move to a different step in my career, John offered me the opportunities to expand my skills by teaching, co-supervising PhD students, working independently with other MIT faculty members, and contributing to grant writing,” one postdoc wrote. 

Marshall’s research group has focused on ocean circulation and coupled climate dynamics involving interactions between motions on different scales, using theory, laboratory experiments, observations and innovative approaches to global ocean modeling.

“I’ve always told my postdocs, if you do good science, everything will sort itself out. Just do good work,” Marshall says. “And I think it’s important that you allow the glory to trickle down.” 

Marshall sees postdoc appointments as a time they can learn to play to their strengths while focusing on important scientific questions. “Having a great postdoc [working] with you and then seeing them going on to great things, it’s such a pleasure to see them succeed,” he says. 

“I’ve had a number of awards. This one means an awful lot to me, because the students and the postdocs matter as much as the science.”

Supporting the whole person

Kara, associate professor of physics, received the “Early Career Mentor Award.”

Many nominators praised Kara’s ability to give advice based on her postdocs’ individual goals. “Her mentoring style is carefully tailored to the particular needs of every individual, to accommodate and promote diverse backgrounds while acknowledging different perspectives, goals, and challenges,” wrote one nominator.

Creating a welcoming and supportive community in her research group, Kara empowers her postdocs by fostering their independence. “Erin’s unique approach to mentorship reminds us of the joy of pursuing our scientific curiosities, enables us to be successful researchers, and prepares us for the next steps in our chosen career path,” said one. Another wrote, “Rather than simply giving answers, she encourages independent thinking by asking the right questions, helping me to arrive at my own solutions and grow as a researcher.”

Kara’s ability to offer holistic, nonjudgmental advice was a throughline in her nominations. “Beyond her scientific mentorship, what truly sets Erin apart is her thoughtful and honest guidance around career development and life beyond work,” one wrote. Another nominator highlighted their positive relationship, writing, “I feel comfortable sharing my concerns and challenges with her, knowing that I will be met with understanding, insightful advice, and unwavering support.” 

Kara’s research group is focused on understanding the physics behind how black holes grow and affect their environments. Kara has advanced a new technique called X-ray reverberation mapping, which allows astronomers to map the gas falling on to black holes and measure the effects of strongly curved spacetime close to the event horizon. 

“I feel like postdocs hold a really special place in our research groups because they come with their own expertise,” says Kara. “I’ve hired them particularly because I want to learn and grow from them as well, and hopefully vice versa.” Kara focuses her mentorship on providing for autonomy, giving postdocs their own mentorship opportunities, and treating them like colleagues.

A postdoc appointment “is this really pivotal time in your career, when you’re figuring out what it is you want to do with the rest of your life,” she says. “So if I can help postdocs navigate that by giving them some support, but also giving them independence to be able to take their next steps, that feels incredibly valuable.”

“I just feel like they make my work/life so rich, and it’s not a hard thing to mentor them because they all are such awesome people and they make our research group really fun.”

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, one of nature's most spectacular visual shows, can be elusive. Conventional wisdom says that to see them, we need to travel to northern Canada or Alaska. However, in the past two years, New Englanders have been seeing these colorful atmospheric displays on a few occasions — including this week — from the comfort of their backyards, as auroras have been visible in central and southern New England and beyond. These unusual auroral events have been driven by increased space weather activity, a phenomenon studied by a team of MIT Haystack Observatory scientists.

Auroral events are generated when particles in space are energized by complicated processes in the near-Earth environment, following which they interact with gases high up in the atmosphere. Space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, in which large amounts of material are ejected from our sun, along with geomagnetic storms, greatly increase energy input into those space regions near Earth. These inputs then trigger other processes that cause an increase in energetic particles entering our atmosphere. 

The result is variable colorful lights when the newly energized particles crash into atoms and molecules high above Earth's surface. Recent significant geomagnetic storm events have triggered these auroral displays at latitudes lower than normal — including sightings across New England and other locations across North America.

New England has been enjoying more of these spectacular light shows, such as this week's displays and those during the intense geomagnetic solar storms in May and October 2024, because of increased space weather activity.

Research has determined that auroral displays occur when selected atoms and molecules high in the upper atmosphere are excited by incoming charged particles, which are boosted in energy by intense solar activity. The most common auroral display colors are pink/red and green, with colors varying according to the altitude at which these reactions occur. Red auroras come from lower-energy particles exciting neutral oxygen and cause emissions at altitudes above 150 miles. Green auroras come from higher-energy particles exciting neutral oxygen and cause emissions at altitudes below 150 miles. Rare purple and blue aurora come from excited molecular nitrogen ions and occur during the most intense events.

Scientists measure the magnitude of geomagnetic activity driving auroras in several different ways. One of these uses sensitive magnetic field-measuring equipment at stations around the planet to obtain a geomagnetic storm measurement known as Kp, on a scale from 1 (least activity) to 9 (greatest activity), in three-hour intervals. Higher Kp values indicate the possibility — not a guarantee — of greater auroral sightings as the location of auroral displays move to lower latitudes. Typically, when the Kp index reaches a range of 6 or higher, this indicates that aurora viewings are more likely outside the usual northern ranges. The geomagnetic storm events of this week reached a Kp value of 9, indicating very strong activity in the sun–Earth system.

At MIT Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts, geospace and atmospheric physics scientists study the atmosphere and its aurora year-round by combining observations from many different instruments. These include ground-based sensors — including large upper-atmosphere radars that bounce signals off particles in the ionosphere — as well as data from space satellites. These tools provide key information, such as density, temperature, and velocity, on conditions and disturbances in the upper atmosphere: basic information that helps researchers at MIT and elsewhere understand the weather in space. 

Haystack geospace research is primarily funded through science funding by U.S. federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA. This work is crucial for our increasingly spacefaring civilization, which requires continual expansion of our understanding of how space weather affects life on Earth, including vital navigation systems such as GPS, worldwide communication infrastructure, and the safety of our power grids. Research in this area is especially important in modern times, as humans increasingly use low Earth orbit for commercial satellite constellations and other systems, and as civilization further progresses into space.

Studies of the variations in our atmosphere and its charged component, known as the ionosphere, have revealed the strong influence of the sun. Beyond the normal white light that we experience each day, the sun also emits many other wavelengths of light, from infrared to extreme ultraviolet. Of particular interest are the extreme ultraviolet portions of solar output, which have enough energy to ionize atoms in the upper atmosphere. Unlike its white light component, the sun's output at these very short wavelengths has many different short- and long-term variations, but the most well known is the approximately 11-year solar cycle, in which the sun goes from minimum to maximum output. 

Scientists have determined that the most recent peak in activity, known as solar maximum, occurred within the past 12 months. This is good news for auroral watchers, as the most active period for severe geomagnetic storms that drive auroral displays at New England latitudes occurs during the three-year period following solar maximum.

Despite intensive research to date, we still have a great deal more to learn about space weather and its effects on the near-Earth environment. MIT Haystack Observatory continues to advance knowledge in this area. 

Larisa Goncharenko, lead geospace scientist and assistant director at Haystack, states, "In general, understanding space weather well enough to forecast it is considerably more challenging than even normal weather forecasting near the ground, due to the vast distances involved in space weather forces. Another important factor comes from the combined variation of Earth's neutral atmosphere, affected by gravity and pressure, and from the charged particle portion of the atmosphere, created by solar radiation and additionally influenced by the geometry of our planet's magnetic field. The complex interplay between these elements provides rich complexity and a sustained, truly exciting scientific opportunity to improve our understanding of basic physics in this vital part of our home in the solar system, for the benefit of civilization."

For up-to-date space weather forecasts and predictions of possible aurora events, visit SpaceWeather.com or NOAA's Aurora Viewline site.

China dominates the global supply of lithium. The country processes about 65 percent of the battery material and has begun on-again, off-again export restrictions of lithium-based products critical to the economy.

Fortunately, the U.S. has significant lithium reserves, most notably in the form of massive underground brines across south Arkansas and east Texas. But recovering that lithium through conventional techniques would be an energy-intensive and environmentally damaging proposition — if it were profitable at all.

Now, the startup Lithios, founded by Mo Alkhadra PhD ’22 and Martin Z. Bazant, the Chevron Chair Professor of Chemical Engineering, is commercializing a new process of lithium recovery it calls Advanced Lithium Extraction. The company uses electricity to drive a reaction with electrode materials that capture lithium from salty brine water, leaving behind other impurities.

Lithios says its process is more selective and efficient than other direct lithium-extraction techniques being developed. It also represents a far cleaner and less energy-intensive alternative to mining and the solar evaporative ponds that are used to extract lithium from underground brines in the high deserts of South America.

Lithios has been running a pilot system continuously extracting lithium from real brine waters from around the world since June. It also recently shipped an early version of its system to a commercial partner scaling up operations in Arkansas.

With the core technology of its modular systems largely validated, next year Lithios plans to begin operating a larger version capable of producing 10 to 100 tons of lithium carbonate per year. From there, the company plans to build a commercial facility that will be able to produce 25,000 tons of lithium carbonate each year. That would represent a massive increase in the total lithium production of the U.S., which is currently limited to less than 5,000 tons per year.

“There’s been a big push recently, and especially in the last year, to secure domestic supplies of lithium and break away from the Chinese chokehold on the critical mineral supply chain,” Alkhadra says. “We have an abundance of lithium deposits at our disposal in the U.S., but we lack the tools to turn those resources into value.”

Adapting a technology

Bazant realized the need for new approaches to mining lithium while working with battery companies through his lab in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering. His group has studied battery materials and electrochemical separation for decades.

As part of his PhD in Bazant’s lab, Alkhadra studied electrochemical processes for separation of dissolved metals, with a focus on removing lead from drinking water and treating industrial wastewater. As Alkhadra got closer to graduation, he and Bazant looked at the most promising commercial applications for his work.

It was 2021, and lithium prices were in the midst of a historic spike driven by the metal’s importance in batteries.

Today, lithium comes primarily from mining or through a slow evaporative process that uses miles of surface ponds to refine and recover lithium from wastewater. Both are energy-intensive and damaging to the environment. They are also dominated by Chinese companies and supply chains.

“A lot of hard rock mining is done in Australia, but most of the rock is shipped as a concentrate to China for refining because they’re the ones who have the technology,” Bazant explains.

Other direct lithium-extraction methods use chemicals and filters, but the founders say those methods struggle to be profitable with U.S. lithium reserves, which have low concentrations of lithium and high levels of impurities.

“Those methods work when you have a good grade of lithium brine, but they become increasingly uneconomical as you get lower-quality resources, which is exactly what the industry is going through right now,” Alkhadra says. “The evaporative process has a huge footprint — we’re talking about the size of Manhattan island for a single project. Conveniently, recovering minerals from those low concentrations was the essence of my PhD work at MIT. We simply had to adapt the technology to the new use case.”

While conducting early talks with potential customers, Alkhadra received guidance from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service, the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. Lithios officially formed when he completed his PhD in 2022 and received the Activate Fellowship. Lithios grew at The Engine, an MIT startup incubator, before moving to their pilot and manufacturing facility in Medford, Massachusetts, in 2024.

Today, Lithios uses an undisclosed electrode material that attaches to lithium when exposed to precise voltages.

“Think of a big battery with water flowing into the system,” Alkhadra explains. “When the brine comes into contact with our electrodes, it selectively pulls lithium while rejecting all the other contaminants. When the lithium has been loaded onto our capture materials, we can simply change the direction of the electrical current to release the lithium back into a clean water stream. It’s similar to charging and discharging a battery.”

Bazant says the company’s lithium-absorbing materials are an ideal fit for this application.

“One of the main challenges of using battery electrodes to extract lithium is how to complete the system,” Bazant says. “We have a great lithium-extraction material that is very stable in water and has wonderful performance. We also learned how to formulate both electrodes with controlled ion transport and mixing to make the process much more efficient and low cost.”

Growing in the ‘MIT spirit’

A U.S. geological survey last year showed the underground Smackover Formation contains between 5 and 19 million tons of lithium in southwest Arkansas alone.

“If you just estimate how much lithium is in that region based on today’s prices, it’s about $2 trillion worth of lithium that can’t be accessed,” Bazant says. “If you could extract these resources efficiently, it would make a huge impact.”

Earlier this year, Lithios shipped its pilot system to a commercial partner in Arkansas to further validate its approach in the region. Lithios also plans to deploy several additional pilot and demonstration projects with other major partners in the oil and gas and mining industries in the coming years.

“After this field deployment, Lithios will quickly scale toward a commercial demonstration plant that will be operational by 2027, with the intent to scale to a kiloton-per-year commercial facility before the end of the decade,” Alkhadra says.

Although Lithios is currently focused on lithium, Bazant says the company’s approach could also be adopted to materials such as rare earth elements and transition metals further down the line.

“We’re developing a unique technology that could make the U.S. the center of the world for critical minerals separation, and we couldn’t have done this anywhere else,” Bazant says. “MIT was the perfect environment, mainly because of the people. There are so many fantastic scientists and businesspeople in the MIT ecosystem who are very technically savvy and ready to jump into a project like this. Our first employees were all MIT people, and they really brought the MIT spirit to our company.”