Mucus is more than just a sticky substance: It contains a wealth of powerful molecules called mucins that help to tame microbes and prevent infection. In a new study, MIT researchers have identified mucins that defend against Salmonella and other bacteria that cause diarrhea.

The researchers now hope to mimic this defense system to create synthetic mucins that could help prevent or treat illness in soldiers or other people at risk of exposure to Salmonella. It could also help prevent “traveler’s diarrhea,” a gastrointestinal infection caused by consuming contaminated food or water.

Mucins are bottlebrush-shaped polymers made of complex sugar molecules known as glycans, which are tethered to a peptide backbone. In this study, the researchers discovered that a mucin called MUC2 turns off genes that Salmonella uses to enter and infect host cells.

“By using and reformatting this motif from the natural innate immune system, we hope to develop strategies to preventing diarrhea before it even starts. This approach could provide a low-cost solution to a major global health challenge that costs billions annually in lost productivity, health care expenses, and human suffering,” says Katharina Ribbeck, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study.

MIT Research Scientist Kelsey Wheeler PhD ’21 and Michaela Gold PhD ’22 are the lead authors of the paper, which appeared Tuesday in the journal Cell Reports.

Blocking infection

Mucus lines much of the body, providing a physical barrier to infection, but that’s not all it does. Over the past decade, Ribbeck has identified mucins that can help to disarm Vibrio cholerae, as well as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can infect the lungs and other organs, and the yeast Candida albicans.

In the new study, the researchers wanted to explore how mucins from the digestive tract might interact with Salmonella enterica, a foodborne pathogen that can cause illness after consuming raw or undercooked food, or contaminated water.

To infect host cells, Salmonella must produce proteins that are part of the type 3 secretion system (T3SS), which helps bacteria form needle-like complexes that transfer bacterial proteins directly into host cells. These proteins are all encoded on a segment of DNA called Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1).

The researchers found that when they exposed Salmonella to a mucin called MUC2, which is found in the intestines, the bacteria stopped producing the proteins encoded by SPI-1, and they were no longer able to infect cells.

Further studies revealed that MUC2 achieves this by turning off a regulatory bacterial protein known as HilD. When this protein is blocked by mucins, it can no longer activate the T3SS genes.

Using computational simulations, the researchers showed that certain monosaccharides found in glycans, including GlcNAc and GalNAc, can attach to a specific binding site of the HilD protein. However, their studies showed that these monosaccharides can’t turn off HilD on their own — the shutoff only occurs when the glycans are tethered to the peptide backbone of the mucin.

The researchers also discovered that a similar mucin called MUC5AC, which is found in the stomach, can block HilD. And, both MUC2 and MUC5AC can turn off virulence genes in other foodborne pathogens that also use HilD as a gene regulator.

Mucins as medicine

Ribbeck and her students now plan to explore ways to use synthetic versions of these mucins to help boost the body’s natural defenses and protect the GI tract from Salmonella and other infections.

Studies from other labs have shown that in mice, Salmonella tends to infect portions of the GI tract that have a thin mucus barrier, or no barrier at all.

“Part of Salmonella’s evasion strategy for this host defense is to find locations where mucus is absent and then infect there. So, one could imagine a strategy where we try to bolster mucus barriers to protect those areas with limited mucin,” Wheeler says.

One way to deploy synthetic mucins could be to add them to oral rehydration salts — mixtures of electrolytes that are dissolved in water and used to treat dehydration caused by diarrhea and other gastrointestinal illnesses.

Another potential application for synthetic mucins would be to incorporate them into a chewable tablet that could be consumed before traveling to areas where Salmonella and other diarrheal illnesses are common. This kind of “pre-exposure prophylaxis” could help prevent a great deal of suffering and lost productivity due to illness, the researchers say.

“Mucin mimics would particularly shine as preventatives, because that’s how the body evolved mucus — as part of this innate immune system to prevent infection,” Wheeler says.

The research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office, the U.S. Army Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Institute of Health and Environmental Sciences, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the German Research Foundation.

Annotating regions of interest in medical images, a process known as segmentation, is often one of the first steps clinical researchers take when running a new study involving biomedical images.

For instance, to determine how the size of the brain’s hippocampus changes as patients age, the scientist first outlines each hippocampus in a series of brain scans. For many structures and image types, this is often a manual process that can be extremely time-consuming, especially if the regions being studied are challenging to delineate.

To streamline the process, MIT researchers developed an artificial intelligence-based system that enables a researcher to rapidly segment new biomedical imaging datasets by clicking, scribbling, and drawing boxes on the images. This new AI model uses these interactions to predict the segmentation.

As the user marks additional images, the number of interactions they need to perform decreases, eventually dropping to zero. The model can then segment each new image accurately without user input.

It can do this because the model’s architecture has been specially designed to use information from images it has already segmented to make new predictions.

Unlike other medical image segmentation models, this system allows the user to segment an entire dataset without repeating their work for each image.

In addition, the interactive tool does not require a presegmented image dataset for training, so users don’t need machine-learning expertise or extensive computational resources. They can use the system for a new segmentation task without retraining the model.

In the long run, this tool could accelerate studies of new treatment methods and reduce the cost of clinical trials and medical research. It could also be used by physicians to improve the efficiency of clinical applications, such as radiation treatment planning.

“Many scientists might only have time to segment a few images per day for their research because manual image segmentation is so time-consuming. Our hope is that this system will enable new science by allowing clinical researchers to conduct studies they were prohibited from doing before because of the lack of an efficient tool,” says Hallee Wong, an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student and lead author of a paper on this new tool.

She is joined on the paper by Jose Javier Gonzalez Ortiz PhD ’24; John Guttag, the Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; and senior author Adrian Dalca, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and MGH, and a research scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). The research will be presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision.

Streamlining segmentation

There are primarily two methods researchers use to segment new sets of medical images. With interactive segmentation, they input an image into an AI system and use an interface to mark areas of interest. The model predicts the segmentation based on those interactions.

A tool previously developed by the MIT researchers, ScribblePrompt, allows users to do this, but they must repeat the process for each new image.

Another approach is to develop a task-specific AI model to automatically segment the images. This approach requires the user to manually segment hundreds of images to create a dataset, and then train a machine-learning model. That model predicts the segmentation for a new image. But the user must start the complex, machine-learning-based process from scratch for each new task, and there is no way to correct the model if it makes a mistake.

This new system, MultiverSeg, combines the best of each approach. It predicts a segmentation for a new image based on user interactions, like scribbles, but also keeps each segmented image in a context set that it refers to later.

When the user uploads a new image and marks areas of interest, the model draws on the examples in its context set to make a more accurate prediction, with less user input.

The researchers designed the model’s architecture to use a context set of any size, so the user doesn’t need to have a certain number of images. This gives MultiverSeg the flexibility to be used in a range of applications.

“At some point, for many tasks, you shouldn’t need to provide any interactions. If you have enough examples in the context set, the model can accurately predict the segmentation on its own,” Wong says.

The researchers carefully engineered and trained the model on a diverse collection of biomedical imaging data to ensure it had the ability to incrementally improve its predictions based on user input.

The user doesn’t need to retrain or customize the model for their data. To use MultiverSeg for a new task, one can upload a new medical image and start marking it.

When the researchers compared MultiverSeg to state-of-the-art tools for in-context and interactive image segmentation, it outperformed each baseline.

Fewer clicks, better results

Unlike these other tools, MultiverSeg requires less user input with each image. By the ninth new image, it needed only two clicks from the user to generate a segmentation more accurate than a model designed specifically for the task.

For some image types, like X-rays, the user might only need to segment one or two images manually before the model becomes accurate enough to make predictions on its own.

The tool’s interactivity also enables the user to make corrections to the model’s prediction, iterating until it reaches the desired level of accuracy. Compared to the researchers’ previous system, MultiverSeg reached 90 percent accuracy with roughly 2/3 the number of scribbles and 3/4 the number of clicks.

“With MultiverSeg, users can always provide more interactions to refine the AI predictions. This still dramatically accelerates the process because it is usually faster to correct something that exists than to start from scratch,” Wong says.

Moving forward, the researchers want to test this tool in real-world situations with clinical collaborators and improve it based on user feedback. They also want to enable MultiverSeg to segment 3D biomedical images.

This work is supported, in part, by Quanta Computer, Inc. and the National Institutes of Health, with hardware support from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center.

People are increasingly turning to software to design complex material structures like airplane wings and medical implants. But as design models become more capable, our fabrication techniques haven’t kept up. Even 3D printers struggle to reliably produce the precise designs created by algorithms. The problem has led to a disconnect between the ways a material is expected to perform and how it actually works.

Now, MIT researchers have created a way for models to account for 3D printing’s limitations during the design process. In experiments, they showed their approach could be used to make materials that perform much more closely to the way they’re intended to.

“If you don’t account for these limitations, printers can either over- or under-deposit material by quite a lot, so your part becomes heavier or lighter than intended. It can also over- or underestimate the material performance significantly,” says Gilbert W. Winslow Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Josephine Carstensen. “With our technique, you know what you’re getting in terms of performance because the numerical model and experimental results align very well.”

The approach is described in the journal Materials and Design, in an open-access paper co-authored by Carstensen and PhD student Hajin Kim-Tackowiak.

Matching theory with reality

Over the last decade, new design and fabrication technologies have transformed the way things are made, especially in industries like aerospace, automotive, and biomedical engineering, where materials must reach precise weight-to-strength ratios and other performance thresholds. In particular, 3D printing allows materials to be made with more complex internal structures.

“3D printing processes generally give us more flexibility because we don’t have to come up with forms or molds for things that would be made through more traditional means like injection molding,” Kim-Tackowiak explains.

As 3D printing has made production more precise, so have methods for designing complex material structures. One of the most advanced computational design techniques is known as topology optimization. Topology optimization has been used to generate new and often surprising material structures that can outperform conventional designs, in some cases approaching the theoretical limits of certain performance thresholds. It is currently being used to design materials with optimized stiffness and strength, maximized energy absorption, fluid permeability, and more.

But topology optimization often creates designs at extremely fine scales that 3D printers have struggled to reliably reproduce. The problem is the size of the print head that extrudes the material. If the design specifies a layer to be 0.5 millimeters thick, for instance, and the print head is only capable of extruding 1-millimeter-thick layers, the final design will be warped and imprecise.

Another problem has to do with the way 3D printers create parts, with a print head extruding a thin bead of material as it glides across the printing area, gradually building parts layer by layer. That can cause weak bonding between layers, making the part more prone to separation or failure.

The researchers sought to address the disconnect between expected and actual properties of materials that arise from those limitations.

“We thought, ‘We know these limitations in the beginning, and the field has gotten better at quantifying these limitations, so we might as well design from the get-go with that in mind,” Kim-Tackowiak says.

In previous work, Carstensen developed an algorithm that embedded information about the print nozzle size into design algorithms for beam structures. For this paper, the researchers built off that approach to incorporate the direction of the print head and the corresponding impact of weak bonding between layers. They also made it work with more complex, porous structures that can have extremely elastic properties.

The approach allows users to add variables to the design algorithms that account for the center of the bead being extruded from a print head and the exact location of the weaker bonding region between layers. The approach also automatically dictates the path the print head should take during production.

The researchers used their technique to create a series of repeating 2D designs with various sizes of hollow pores, or densities. They compared those creations to materials made using traditional topology optimization designs of the same densities.

In tests, the traditionally designed materials deviated from their intended mechanical performance more than materials designed using the researchers’ new technique at material densities under 70 percent. The researchers also found that conventional designs consistently over-deposited material during fabrication. Overall, the researchers’ approach led to parts with more reliable performance at most densities.

“One of the challenges of topology optimization has been that you need a lot of expertise to get good results, so that once you take the designs off the computer, the materials behave the way you thought they would,” Carstensen says. “We’re trying to make it easy to get these high-fidelity products.”

Scaling a new design approach

The researchers believe this is the first time a design technique has accounted for both the print head size and weak bonding between layers.

“When you design something, you should use as much context as possible,” Kim-Tackowiak says. “It was rewarding to see that putting more context into the design process makes your final materials more accurate. It means there are fewer surprises. Especially when we’re putting so much more computational resources into these designs, it’s nice to see we can correlate what comes out of the computer with what comes out of the production process.”

In future work, the researchers hope to improve their method for higher material densities and for different kinds of materials like cement and ceramics. Still, they said their approach offered an improvement over existing techniques, which often require experienced 3D printing specialists to help account for the limitations of the machines and materials.

“It was cool to see that just by putting in the size of your deposition and the bonding property values, you get designs that would have required the consultation of somebody who’s worked in the space for years,” Kim-Tackowiak says.

The researchers say the work paves the way to design with more materials.

“We’d like to see this enable the use of materials that people have disregarded because printing with them has led to issues,” Kim-Tackowiak says. “Now we can leverage those properties or work with those quirks as opposed to just not using all the material options we have at our disposal.”

MIT professors Zachary Hartwig and Wanda Orlikowski exemplify a rare but powerful kind of mentorship — one grounded not just in intellectual excellence, but in deep personal care. They remind us that transformative academic leadership starts with humanity. 

Whether it's Hartwig’s ability to bring engineering brilliance to life through genuine personal connection, or Orlikowski’s unwavering support for those who share in her mission to create meaningful impact, both foster environments where people, not just ideas, can thrive. 

Their students and colleagues describe feeling seen, supported, and encouraged not only to grow as scholars, but as people. It’s this ethic of care, of valuing the human behind the research, that defines their mentorship and elevates those around them.

Hartwig and Orlikowski are two of the 2023-25 Committed to Caring cohort who are fostering transformative research through growth, independence, and support. For MIT graduate students, the Committed to Caring program recognizes those who go above and beyond.

Zachary Hartwig: Signposts on the way to new territory

Zachary (Zach) Seth Hartwig is an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) with a co-appointment at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). He has worked in the areas of large-scale applied superconductivity, magnet fusion device design, radiation detector development, and accelerator science and engineering. His active research focuses on the development of high-field superconducting magnet technologies for fusion energy and accelerated irradiation methods for fusion materials using ion beams.

One nominator expressed, “although he didn't formally become my advisor until after I submitted my thesis prospectus, I always felt like Zach had my back.” This feeling of support was shared by Hartwig’s advisees through numerous examples.

When the pandemic started, Hartwig made sure that the student had ongoing support and a safe place to simply exist as an international visiting student during a tumultuous time. This care often presented in small ways: when the mentee needed to debug their cryogenic system, Hartwig showed up at the lab every day to help plan the next test; when this same student struggled to write the introduction of their first paper, Hartwig continued to provide support; and when the student wanted to practice for their qualifying exam, Hartwig insisted on helping until the last day. Additionally, when the advisee’s funding was nearing its end, Hartwig secured transition support to bridge the gap.

The nominator reflected on Hartwig’s cheerful and positive mentorship style, noting that “through it all, he … always valued my ideas, he was never judgmental, he never raised his voice, he never dismissed me.” 

Hartwig characterizes himself as “highly supportive, but from the backseat.” He is active with and available to his students; however, it is essential to him that they are the ones driving the research. “Graduate students need to experience increasing amounts of autonomy, but within a supportive framework that fades as they need to rely on it less and less as they become independent researchers,” he notes.

Hartwig shapes the intellectual maturation of his students. He believes that graduate school is not solely about results or publications, but about whom students become in the process. 

“The most important output of a PhD program is not your results, your papers, or your thesis; it’s YOU,” he emphasizes. His mentorship is built around this philosophy, creating an environment where students steadily evolve into independent researchers.

Importantly, Hartwig cultivates a culture where daring, unconventional ideas are not just allowed — they’re encouraged. He models this approach through his own career, which has taken bold leaps across disciplines and technologies. 

“MIT should do things only MIT can do,” he tells his students. His message is clear: Graduate students should not be afraid to go against the grain.

This philosophy has inspired many of his students to explore nontraditional research paths, armed with the confidence that failure is not a setback, but a sign that they are asking ambitious questions. Hartwig regularly reinforces this, reminding students that null results and dead ends often teach us the most. 

“They’re the signposts you have to pass on the way to new territory,” he says.

Ultimately, one of the most fulfilling parts of Hartwig’s work is witnessing the moment when it all “clicks” for a student — when they begin to lead boldly, push back thoughtfully, and take true ownership of their research. “It’s a beautiful thing when it happens,” he reflects. 

For Hartwig, mentorship is about fostering not only the skills of a scientist, but the identity of one. His students don’t just grow in knowledge, they grow in courage, conviction, and clarity.

Wanda Orlikowski: Shaping research by supporting the people who make it happen

Wanda Orlikowski is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Information Technology and Organization Studies at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Her research examines technologies in the workplace, with a particular focus on how digital reconfigurations generate significant shifts in organizing, coordination, and accountability. She is currently exploring the digital transformation of work.

Through times of uncertainty, students always find support in Orlikowski. One of her nominators shared that they have encountered many moments of doubt during the research development phase of their dissertation. “I [have had] concerns … that I'm not making progress. I do all this work, and it’s not going anywhere, I keep returning back to where I started,” the mentee reflected. 

Orlikowski has walked this advisee through those moments patiently and with great empathy, connecting her own experiences with those of her students. She often talks about the research process not being a straight line of progress, but rather a spiral. 

“This metaphor … suggests that coming back to ideas again and again is in fact progress,” rather than a failure. “Every time I come back to it, I’m at a higher plane, and I’m refining the same idea further and further,” the nominator wrote.

Students say that Orlikowski makes an effort to support them through moments of doubt, turning these moments into opportunities for growth. “It has … been such a benefit for me to have her near-constant availability,” the student said. “She listens to my thoughts and lets me just talk and spitball ideas, without her interrupting.” 

Orlikowski pushes and prods her students to elaborate, clarify, and expand their thoughts. She does this proactively, spending many hours every week talking to her students, reading their writing, and making scrupulous comments on their work. 

Orlikowski has been remarkably perceptive when her students need support. One of the nominators struggled during their first holiday season in the PhD program, unable to visit their family. Orlikowski noticed the student’s isolation and reached out, inviting the student to her family’s Christmas dinner, a gesture that turned into a heartwarming tradition. 

“I gave her an orchid that first year, and to this day, it continues to bloom each year. Wanda regularly sends me pictures of it, and the joy she expresses in keeping it alive means so much to me. I feel that in her care, both the orchid and our connection have flourished,” the mentee remarks.

“One of the things I’ve appreciated most about Wanda is that she has never tried to change who I am,” the nominator adds. They go on to describe themselves as not a very strategic or extroverted person by nature, and for a long time, they struggled with the idea that these qualities might hinder their success in academia. “Wanda has helped me embrace my true self.”

“It’s not about fitting into a mold,” Orlikowski reminded the student, “It’s about being true to who you are, and doing great work.” Her support has made the student comfortable with their approach to both research and life.

The academic world often feels like it rewards self-promotion and strategic maneuvering, but Orlikowski has alleviated much of her students’ anxiety about whether they can be competitive without it. “You don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not,” she assures them. “The work will speak for itself.” 

Orlikowski’s support for her students extends beyond encouragement; she advocates for their work, helping them gain visibility and traction in the broader academic community. “It’s not just words — she has actively supported me, promoting my work through her network of students and peers,” the nominator articulated. 

Her belief in her mentees, and her willingness to support their work, has had a profound impact on their academic journey.

Just as the United States has prospered through its ability to draw talent from every corner of the globe, so too has MIT thrived as a magnet for the world’s most keen and curious minds — many of whom remain here to invent solutions, create companies, and teach future leaders, contributing to America’s success.

President Ronald Reagan remarked in 1989 that the United States leads the world “because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.” Those words ring still ring true 36 years later — and the sentiment resonates especially at MIT.

"To find people with the drive, skill, and daring to see, discover, and invent things no one else can, we open ourselves to talent from every corner of the United States and from around the globe,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MIT is an American university, proudly so — but we would be gravely diminished without the students and scholars who join us from other nations."

MIT’s steadfast commitment to attracting the best and brightest talent from around the world has contributed to not just its own success, but also that of the nation as whole. MIT’s stature as an international hub of education and innovation adds value to the U.S. economy and competitiveness in myriad ways — from foreign-born faculty delivering breakthroughs here and founding American companies that create American jobs to international students contributing over $264 million annually to the U.S. economy during the 2023-24 school year.

Highlighting the extent and value of its global character, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Activities recently expanded a new video series, “The World at MIT.” In it, 20 faculty members born outside the United States tell how they dreamed of coming to MIT while growing up abroad and eventually joined the MIT faculty, where they’ve helped establish and maintain global leadership in science while teaching the next generation of innovators. A common thread running through their stories is the importance of the campus’s distinct nature as a community that is both profoundly American and deeply connected to the people, institutions, and concerns of regions and nations around the globe.

Joining the MIT faculty in 1980, MIT President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif knew almost instantly that he would stay.

“I was impressed by the richness of the variety of groups of people and cultures here,” says Reif, who moved to the United States from Venezuela and eventually served as MIT’s president from 2012 to 2022. “There is no richer place than MIT, because every point of view is here. That is what makes the place so special.”

The benefits of welcoming international students and researchers to campus extend well beyond MIT. More than 17,000 MIT alumni born elsewhere now call the United States home, for example, and many have founded U.S.-based companies that have generated billions of dollars in economic activity.

Contributing to America’s prestige internationally, one-third of MIT’s 104 Nobel laureates — including seven of the eight Nobel winners over the last decade — were born abroad. Drawn to MIT, they went on to make their breakthroughs in the United States. Among them is Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry Moungi Bawendi, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2023 for his work in the chemical production of high-quality quantum dots.   

“MIT is a great environment. It’s very collegial, very collaborative. As a result, we also have amazing students,” says Bawendi, who lived in France and Tunisia as a child before moving to the U.S. “I couldn’t have done my first three years here, which eventually got me a Nobel Prize, without having really bold, smart, adventurous graduate students.”

The give-and-take among MIT faculty and students also inspires electrical engineering and computer science professor Akintunde Ibitayo (Tayo) Akinwande, who grew up in Nigeria.

“Anytime I teach a class, I always learn something from my students’ probing questions,” Akinwande says. “It gives me new insights sometimes, and that’s always the kind of environment I like — where I’m learning something new all the time.”

MIT’s global vibe inspires its students to not only explore worlds of ideas in campus labs and classrooms, but to journey the world itself. Forty-three percent of undergraduates pursued international experiences during the last academic year — taking courses at foreign universities, conducting research, or interning at multinational companies. MIT students and faculty alike are regularly engaged in research outside the United States, addressing some of the world’s toughest challenges and devising solutions that can be deployed back home, as well as abroad. In so doing, they embody MIT’s motto of “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), reflecting the educational ideals of MIT’s founders who promoted education for practical application.

As someone who loves exploring “lofty questions” along with the practical design of things, Nergis Mavalvala found a perfect fit at MIT and calls her position as the Marble Professor of Astrophysics and dean of the School of Science “the best job in the world.”

“Everybody here wants to make the world a better place and are using their intellectual gifts and their education to do so,” says Mavalvala, who emigrated from Pakistan. “And I think that’s an amazing community to be part of.”

Daniela Rus agrees. Now the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Rus was drawn to the practical application of mathematics while still a student in her native Romania.   

“And so, now here I am at MIT, essentially bringing together the world of science and math with the world of making things,” Rus says. “I’ve been here for two decades, and it’s been an extraordinary journey.”

The daughter of an Albert Einstein afficionado, Yukiko Yamashita grew up in Japan thinking of science not as a job, but a calling. MIT, where she is a professor of biology, is a place where people “are really open to unconventional ideas” and “intellectual freedom” thrives.

“There is something sacred about doing science. That’s how I grew up,” Yamashita says. “There are some distinct MIT characteristics. In a good way, people can’t let go. Every day, I am creating more mystery than I answer.”

For more about the paths that brought Yamashita and others to MIT and stories of how their disparate personal histories enrich the campus and wider community, visit the “World at MIT” videos website.

“Our global community’s multiplicity of ideas, experiences, and perspectives contributes enormously to MIT’s innovative and entrepreneurial spirit and, by extension, to the innovation and competitiveness of the U.S.,” says Vice Provost for International Activities Duane Boning, whose department developed the video series. “The bottom line is that both MIT and the U.S. grow stronger when we harness the talents of the world’s best and brightest.”

Whitney Zhang ’21 believes in the importance of valuing workers regardless of where they fit into an organizational chart.

Zhang is a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Economics studying labor economics. She explores how the technological and managerial decisions companies make affect workers across the pay spectrum. 

“I’ve been interested in economics, economic impacts, and related social issues for a long time,” says Zhang, who majored in mathematical economics as an undergraduate. “I wanted to apply my math skills to see how we could improve policies and their effects.”

Zhang is interested in how to improve conditions for workers. She believes it’s important to build relationships with policymakers, focusing on an evidence-driven approach to policy, while always remembering to center those the policies may affect. “We have to remember the people whose lives are impacted by business operations and legislation,” she says. 

She’s also aware of the complex intermixture of politics, social status, and financial obligations organizations and their employees have to navigate.

“Though I’m studying workers, it’s important to consider the entire complex ecosystem when solving for these kinds of challenges, including firm incentives and global economic conditions,” she says.

The intersection of tech and labor policy

Zhang began investigating employee productivity, artificial intelligence, and related economic and labor market phenomena early in her time as a doctoral student, collaborating frequently with fellow PhD students in the department.

A collaboration with economics doctoral student Shakked Noy yielded the 2023 study investigating ChatGPT as a tool to improve productivity. Their research found it substantially increased workers’ productivity on writing tasks, most so for workers who initially performed the worst on the tasks.

“This was one of the earliest pieces of evidence on the productivity effects of generative AI, and contributed to providing concrete data on how impactful these types of tools might be in the workplace and on the labor market,” Zhang says.

In other ongoing research — “Determinants of Irregular Worker Schedules” — Zhang is using data from a payroll provider to examine scheduling unpredictability, investigating why companies employ unpredictable schedules and how these schedules affect low-wage employees’ quality of life.

The scheduling project, conducted with MIT economics PhD student Nathan Lazarus, is motivated, in part, by existing sociological evidence that low-wage workers’ unpredictable schedules are associated with worse sleep and well-being. “We’ve seen a relationship between higher turnover and inconsistent, inadequate schedules, which suggests workers dis-prefer these kinds of schedules,” Zhang says.

At an academic roundtable, Zhang presented her results to Starbucks employees involved in scheduling and staffing. The attendees wanted to learn more about how different scheduling practices impacted workers and their productivity. “These are the kinds of questions that could reveal useful information for small businesses, large corporations, and others,” she says.

By conducting this research, Zhang hopes to better understand whether or not scheduling regulations can improve affected employees’ quality of life, while also considering potential unintended consequences. “Why are these schedules set the way they’re set?” she asks. “Do businesses with these kinds of schedules require increased regulation?”

Another project, conducted with MIT economics doctoral student Arjun Ramani, examines the linkages between offshoring, remote work, and related outcomes. “Do the technological and managerial practices that have made remote work possible further facilitate offshoring?” she asks. “Do organizations see significant gains in efficiency? What are the impacts on U.S. and offshore workers?”

Her work is being funded through the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Putting people at the center

Zhang has observed the different kinds of people economics and higher education could bring together. She followed a dual enrollment track in high school, completing college-level courses with students from across a variety of demographic identities. “I enjoyed centering people in my work,” she says. “Taking classes with a diverse group of students, including veterans and mothers returning to school to complete their studies, made me more curious about socioeconomic issues and the policies relevant to them.”

She later enrolled at MIT, where she participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). She also completed an internship at the World Bank, worked as a summer analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and worked as an assistant for a diverse faculty cohort including MIT economists David Autor, Jon Gruber, and Nina Roussille. Autor is her primary advisor on her doctoral research, a mentor she cites as a significant influence.

“[Autor’s] course, 14.03 (Microeconomics and Public Policy), cemented connections between theory and practice,” she says. “I thought the class was revelatory in showing the kinds of questions economics can answer.”

Doctoral study has revealed interesting pathways of investigation for Zhang, as have her relationships with her student peers and other faculty. She has, for example, leveraged faculty connections to gain access to hourly wage data in support of her scheduling and employee impacts work. “Generally, economists have had administrative data on earnings, but not on hours,” she notes.

Zhang’s focus on improving others’ lives extends to her work outside the classroom. She’s a mentor for the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center College Access Program and a member of MIT’s Graduate Christian Fellowship group. When she’s not enjoying spicy soups or paddling on the Charles, she takes advantage of opportunities to decompress with her art at W20 Arts Studios.

“I wanted to create time for myself outside of research and the classroom,” she says.

Zhang cites the benefits of MIT’s focus on cross-collaboration and encouraging students to explore other disciplines. As an undergraduate, Zhang minored in computer science, which taught her coding skills critical to her data work. Exposure to engineering also led her to become more interested in questions around how technology and workers interact.

Working with other scholars in the department has improved how Zhang conducts inquiries. “I’ve become the kind of well-rounded student and professional who can identify and quantify impacts, which is invaluable for future projects,” she says. Exposure to different academic and research areas, Zhang argues, helps increase access to ideas and information.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann ’11 was one of 10 individuals chosen from a field of 8,000 applicants for the 2025 U.S. astronaut candidate class, NASA announced in a live ceremony on Sept. 22. 

This is NASA’s 24th class of astronaut candidates since the first Mercury 7 astronauts were chosen in 1959. Upon completion of his training, Fuhrmann will be the 45th MIT graduate to become a flight-eligible astronaut.

“As test pilots we don't do anything on our own, we work with amazing teams of engineers and maintenance professionals to plan, simulate, and execute complex and sometimes risky missions in aircraft to collect data and accomplish a mission, all while assessing risk and making smart calls as a team to do that as safely as possible,” Fuhrmann said at NASA’s announcement ceremony in Houston, Texas. “I'm happy to try to bring some of that experience to do the same thing with the NASA team and learn from everyone at Johnson Space Center how to apply those lessons to human spaceflight.”

His class now begins two years of training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston that includes instruction and skills development for complex operations aboard the International Space Station, Artemis missions to the moon, and beyond. Training includes robotics, land and water survival, geology, foreign language, space medicine and physiology, and more, while also conducting simulated spacewalks and flying high-performance jets.

From MIT to astronaut training

Fuhrmann, 35, is from Leesburg, Virginia, and has accumulated more than 2,100 flight hours in 27 aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35. He has served as a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and experimental test pilot for nearly 14 years and deployed in support of operations Freedom’s Sentinel and Resolute Support, logging 400 combat hours.

Fuhrmann holds a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and master’s degrees in flight test engineering and systems engineering from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and Purdue University, respectively. While at MIT, he was a member of Air Force ROTC Detachment 365 and was selected as the third-ever student leader of the Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (GEL) in spring 2011.

“We are tremendously proud of Adam for this notable accomplishment, and we look forward to following his journey through astronaut candidate school and beyond,” says Leo McGonagle, GEL founding and executive director.

“It’s always a thrill to learn that one of our own has joined NASA's illustrious astronaut corps,” says Julie Shah, head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the H.N. Slater Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics. “Adam is Course 16’s 19th astronaut alum. We take very seriously the responsibility to provide the very best aerospace engineering education, and it's so gratifying to see that those fundamentals continue to set individuals from our community on the path to becoming an astronaut.”

Learning to be a leader at MIT

McGonagle recalls that Fuhrmann was a very early participant in GEL from 2009 to 2011.

“The GEL Program was still in its infancy during this time and was in somewhat of a fragile state as we were seeking to grow and cement ourselves as a viable MIT program. As the fall 2010 semester was winding down, it was evident that the program needed an effective GEL2 student leader during the spring semester, who could lead by example and inspire fellow students and who was an example of what right looks like. I knew Adam was already an emerging leader as a senior cadet in MIT’s Air Force ROTC Detachment, so I tapped him for the role of spring student leader of GEL,” said McGonagle.

Fuhrmann initially sought to decline this role, citing his time as a leader in ROTC. But McGonagle, having led the Army ROTC Program prior to GEL, felt that the GEL Student Leader role would challenge and develop Fuhrmann in other ways. In GEL, he would be charged with leading and inspiring students from a broad background of experiences, and focused exclusively on leading within engineering contexts, while engaging with engineering industry organizations.

“GEL needed strong student leadership at this time, so Adam took on the role, and it ended up being a win-win for both him and the program. He later expressed to me that the experience challenged him in ways that he hadn’t anticipated and complemented his Air Force ROTC leadership development. He was grateful for the opportunity, and the program stabilized and grew under Adam’s leadership. He was the right student at the right time and place,” said McGonagle.

Fuhrmann has remained connected to the GEL program. He asked McGonagle to administer his oath of commissioning into the U.S. Air Force, with his family in attendance, at the historic Bunker Hill Monument in Boston. “One of my proudest GEL memories,” said McGonagle, who is a former U.S. Army Lt. Colonel.

Throughout his time in service which included overseas deployments, Fuhrmann has actively participated in Junior Engineering Leader’s Roundtable leadership labs (ELLs) with GEL students, and he has kept in touch with his GEL2 cohort.

“Adam’s GEL2 cohort meets informally once or twice a year, usually via Zoom, to share and discuss professional challenges, lessons learned, life stories, to keep in touch with each other. This small but excellent group of GEL alum is committed to staying connected and supporting one another, as part of the broader GEL community,” said McGonagle.

At the center of nuclear reactors across the United States, a new type of chromium-coated fuel is being used to make the reactors more efficient and more resistant to accidents. The fuel is one of many innovations sprung from collaboration between researchers at MIT and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) — a relationship that has altered the trajectory of the country’s nuclear industry.

Amid renewed excitement around nuclear energy in America, MIT’s research community is working to further develop next-generation fuels, accelerate the deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs), and enable the first nuclear reactor in space.

Researchers at MIT and INL have worked closely for decades, and the collaboration takes many forms, including joint research efforts, student and postdoc internships, and a standing agreement that lets INL employees spend extended periods on MIT’s campus researching and teaching classes. MIT is also a founding member of the Battelle Energy Alliance, which has managed the Idaho National Laboratory for the Department of Energy since 2005.

The collaboration gives MIT’s community a chance to work on the biggest problems facing America’s nuclear industry while bolstering INL’s research infrastructure.

“The Idaho National Laboratory is the lead lab for nuclear energy technology in the United States today — that’s why it’s essential that MIT works hand in hand with INL,” says Jacopo Buongiorno, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. “Countless MIT students and postdocs have interned at INL over the years, and a memorandum of understanding that strengthened the collaboration between MIT and INL in 2019 has been extended twice.”

Ian Waitz, MIT’s vice president for research, adds, “The strong collaborative history between MIT and the Idaho National Laboratory enables us to jointly contribute practical technologies to enable the growth of clean, safe nuclear energy. It’s a clear example of how rigorous collaboration across sectors, and among the nation’s top research facilities, can advance U.S. economic prosperity, health, and well-being.”

Research with impact

Much of MIT’s joint research with INL involves tests and simulations of new nuclear materials, fuels, and instrumentation. One of the largest collaborations was part of a global push for more accident-tolerant fuels in the wake of the nuclear accident that followed the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, Japan.

In a series of studies involving INL and members of the nuclear energy industry, MIT researchers helped identify and evaluate alloy materials that could be deployed in the near term to not only bolster safety but also offer higher densities of fuel.

“These new alloys can withstand much more challenging conditions during abnormal occurrences without reacting chemically with steam, which could result in hydrogen explosions during accidents,” explains Buongiorno, who is also the director of science and technology at MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Laboratory and the director of MIT’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems. “The fuels can take much more abuse without breaking apart in the reactor, resulting in a higher safety margin.”

The fuels tested at MIT were eventually adopted by power plants across the U.S., starting with the Byron Clean Energy Center in Ogle County, Illinois.

“We’re also developing new materials, fuels, and instrumentation,” Buongiorno says. “People don’t just come to MIT and say, ‘I have this idea, evaluate it for me.’ We collaborate with industry and national labs to develop the new ideas together, and then we put them to the test,  reproducing the environment in which these materials and fuels would operate in commercial power reactors. That capability is quite unique.”

Another major collaboration was led by Koroush Shirvan, MIT’s Atlantic Richfield Career Development Professor in Energy Studies. Shirvan’s team analyzed the costs associated with different reactor designs, eventually developing an open-source tool to help industry leaders evaluate the feasibility of different approaches.

“The reason we’re not building a single nuclear reactor in the U.S. right now is cost and financial risk,” Shirvan says. “The projects have gone over budget by a factor of two and their schedule has lengthened by a factor of 1.5, so we’ve been doing a lot of work assessing the risk drivers. There’s also a lot of different types of reactors proposed, so we’ve looked at their cost potential as well and how those costs change if you can mass manufacture them.”

Other INL-supported research of Shirvan’s involves exploring new manufacturing methods for nuclear fuels and testing materials for use in a nuclear reactor on the surface of the moon.

“You want materials that are lightweight for these nuclear reactors because you have to send them to space, but there isn’t much data around how those light materials perform in nuclear environments,” Shirvan says.

People and progress

Every summer, MIT students at every level travel to Idaho to conduct research in INL labs as interns.

“It’s an example of our students getting access to cutting-edge research facilities,” Shirvan says.

There are also several joint research appointments between the institutions. One such appointment is held by Sacit Cetiner, a distinguished scientist at INL who also currently runs the MIT and INL Joint Center for Reactor Instrumentation and Sensor Physics (CRISP) at MIT’s Nuclear Reactor Laboratory.

CRISP focuses its research on key technology areas in the field of instrumentation and controls, which have long stymied the bottom line of nuclear power generation.

“For the current light-water reactor fleet, operations and maintenance expenditures constitute a sizeable fraction of unit electricity generation cost,” says Cetiner. “In order to make advanced reactors economically competitive, it’s much more reasonable to address anticipated operational issues during the design phase. One such critical technology area is remote and autonomous operations. Working directly with INL, which manages the projects for the design and testing of several advanced reactors under a number of federal programs, gives our students, faculty, and researchers opportunities to make a real impact.”

The sharing of experts helps strengthen MIT and the nation’s nuclear workforce overall.

“MIT has a crucial role to play in advancing the country’s nuclear industry, whether that’s testing and developing new technologies or assessing the economic feasibility of new nuclear designs,” Buongiorno says.

MIT has placed second in U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings of the nation’s best universities, announced today. 

As in past years, MIT’s engineering program continues to lead the list of undergraduate engineering programs at a doctoral institution. The Institute also placed first in five out of 10 engineering disciplines.

U.S. News placed MIT first in its evaluation of undergraduate computer science programs, ranking it No. 1 in four out of 10 computer science disciplines.

MIT also topped the list of undergraduate business programs, a ranking it shares with the University of Pennsylvania. Among business subfields, MIT is ranked first in two out of 10 specialties.

Within the magazine’s rankings of “academic programs to look for,” MIT topped the list in the category of undergraduate research and creative projects. The Institute also ranks as the second most innovative national university and the fourth best value, according to the U.S. News peer assessment survey of top academics.

MIT placed first in five engineering specialties: aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering; chemical engineering; computer engineering; materials engineering; and mechanical engineering. It placed within the top five in two other engineering areas: biomedical engineering and electrical/electronic/communication engineering.

Other schools in the top five overall for undergraduate engineering programs are Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Caltech, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

In computer science, MIT placed first in four specialties: artificial intelligence (shared with Carnegie Mellon University); biocomputing/bioinformatics/biotechnology; computer systems; and theory. It placed in the top five of six other disciplines: cybersecurity; data analytics/science; game/simulation development (shared with Carnegie Mellon); mobile/web applications; programming languages; and software engineering.

Other schools in the top five overall for undergraduate computer science programs are Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton University, and Georgia Tech.

Among undergraduate business specialties, the MIT Sloan School of Management leads in production/operations management and quantitative analysis. It also placed within the top five in five other categories: analytics; entrepreneurship; finance; management information systems; and supply chain management/logistics.

Other undergraduate business programs ranking in the top five include UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and New York University.

Recently, U.S. News & World Report ranked medium to large undergraduate economics programs based on a peer assessment survey; MIT’s economics program has placed first in this ranking.