At first glimpse, student Jack Carson might appear too busy to think beyond his next problem set, much less tackle major works of philosophy. The sophomore, who plans to double major in electrical engineering with computing and mathematics, has been both an officer in Impact@MIT and a Social and Ethical Responsibility in Computing (SERC) Fellow in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computer Science — and is an active member of Concourse. 

But this fall, Carson was awarded first place in the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest for his entry, “We Know Only Men: Reading Emmanuel Levinas On The Rez,” a comparative exploration of Jewish and Cherokee ethical thought. The deeply researched essay links Carson’s hometown in Adair County, Oklahoma, to the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon, France, and attempts to answer the question: “What is to be done after catastrophe?” Carson explains in this interview.

Q: The prompt for your entry in the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest was: “What challenges awaken your conscience? Is it the conflicts in American society? An international crisis? Maybe a difficult choice you currently face or a hard decision you had to make?” How did you land on the topic you’d write about?

A: It was really an insight that just came to me as I struggled with reading Levinas, who is notoriously challenging. The Talmud is a tradition very far from my own, but, as I read Levinas’ lectures on the Talmud, I realized that his project is one that I can relate to: preserving a culture that has been completely displaced, where not destroyed. The more I read of Levinas’ work the more I realized that his philosophy of radical alterity — that you must act when confronted with another person who you can never really comprehend — arose naturally from his efforts to show how to preserve Jewish cultural continuity. In the same if less articulated way, the life I’ve witnessed in Eastern Oklahoma has led people to “act first, think later” — to use a Levinasian term. So it struck me that similar situations of displaced cultures had led to a similar ethical approach. Given that Levinas was writing about Jewish life in Eastern Europe and I was immersed in a heavily Native American culture, the congruence of the two ethical approaches seemed surprising. I thought, perhaps rightly, that it showed something essentially human that could be abstracted away from the very different cultural settings.

Q: Your entry for the contest is a meditation on the ethical similarities between ga-du-gi, the Cherokee concept of communal effort toward the betterment of all; the actions of the Huguenot inhabitants of the French village of Le Chambon sur Lignon (who protected thousands of Jewish refugees during Nazi occupation); and the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ interpretation of the Talmud, which essentially posits that action must come first in an ethical framework, not second. Did you find your own personal philosophy changing as a result of engaging with these ideas — or, perhaps more appropriately — have you noticed your everyday actions changing? 

A: Yes, definitely my personal philosophy has been affected by thinking through Levinas’ demanding approach. Like a lot of people, I sit around thinking through what ethical approach I prefer. Should I be a utilitarian? A virtue theorist? A Kantian? Something else? Levinas had no time for this. He urged acting, not thinking, when confronted with human need. I wrote about the resistance movement of Le Chambon because those brave citizens also just acted without thinking — in a very Levinasian way. That seems a strange thing to valorize, as we are often taught to think before you act, and this is probably good advice! But sometimes you can think your way right out of helping people in need. 

Levinas instructed that you should act in the face of the overwhelming need of what he would call the “Other.” That’s a rather intimidating term, but I read it as meaning just “other people.” The Le Chambon villagers, who protected Jews fleeing the Nazis, and the Cherokees lived this, acting in an almost pre-theoretical way in helping people in need that is really quite beautiful. And for Levinas, I’d note that the problematic word is “because.” And I wrote about how “because” is indeed a thin reed that the murderers will always break. 

Put a little differently, “because” suggests that you have to have “reasons” that complete the phrase and make it coherent. This might seem almost a matter of logic. But Levinas says no. Because the genocide starts when the reasons are attacked. For example, you might believe we should help some persecuted group “because” they are really just like you and me. And that’s true, of course. But Levinas knows that the killers always start by dehumanizing their targets, so they convince you that the victims are not really like you at all, but are more like “vermin” or “insects.” So the “because” condition fails, and that’s when the murdering starts. So you should just act and then think, says Levinas, and this immunizes you from that rhetorical poison. It’s a counterintuitive idea, but powerful when you really think about it.

Q: You open with a particularly striking question: What is to be done after catastrophe? Do you feel more sure of your answer, now that you’ve deeply considered these disparate response to a catastrophic event — or do you have more questions? 

A: I am still not sure what to do after world-historical catastrophes like genocides. I guess I’d say there is nothing to do — other than maintain a kind of radical hope that has no basis in evidence. “Catastrophes” like those I write about — the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears — are more than just acts of physical destruction. They destroy whole ways of being and uproot whole systems of meaning-making. Cultural concepts become void overnight, as their preconditions are destroyed. 

There is a great book by Jonathan Lear called “Radical Hope.” It begins with a discussion of a Plains Indian leader named Plenty Coups. After removal to the reservation in the 19th century, he is quoted as saying, “But when the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.” Lear ponders what that last sentence is all about. What did Plenty Coups mean when he said “after this nothing happened?” Obviously, life’s daily activities still happened: births, deaths, eating, drinking, and such. So what does it mean? It’s perplexing. In the end, Lear concludes that Plenty Coups was making an ontological statement, in which he meant that all of the things that gave life meaning — all of those things that make the word “happen” actually signify something — had been erased. Events occurred, but didn’t “happen” because they fell into a world that to Plenty Coups lacked any sense at all. And Plenty Coups was not wrong about this; for him and his people, the world lost intelligibility. Nonetheless, Plenty Coups continued to lead his people, even amidst great deprivation, even though he never found a new basis for belief. He only had “radical hope” — which gave Lears’ book its name — that some new way of life might arise over time. I guess my answer to “what happens after catastrophe?” is just, well, “nothing happens” in the sense Plenty Coups meant it. And “radical hope” is all you get, if anything.

Q: There’s a memorable scene in your essay in which, during a visit to your community cemetery near Stilwell, your grandfather points out the burial plots that hold both your ancestors, and that will eventually hold him and you. You describe this moment beautifully as a comforting and connective chain linking you to both past and future communities. How does being part of that chain shape your life? 

A: I feel this sense of knowing where you will be buried — alongside all of your ancestors — is a great gift. That sounds a little odd, but it gives a rootedness that is very removed from most people’s experience today. And the cemetery is just a stand-in for a whole cultural structure that gives me a sense of role and responsibility. The lack of these, I think, creates a real sense of alienation, and this alienation is the condition of our age. So I feel lucky to have a strong sense of place and a place that will always be home. Lincoln talked about the “mystic chords of memory.” I feel this very mystical attachment to Oklahoma. The idea that this road or this community is one where every member of your family for generations has lived — or even if they moved away, always considered “home” — is very powerful. It always gives an answer to “Who are you?” That’s a hard question, but I can always say, “We are from Adair County,” and this is a sufficient answer. And back home, people would instantly nod their heads at the adequacy of this response. As I said, it’s a little mystical, but maybe that’s a strength, not a weakness.

Q: People might be surprised to learn that the winner of an essay contest focusing on ethics is actually not an English or philosophy major, but is instead in EECS. What areas and current issues in the field do you find interesting from an ethical perspective?

A: I think the pace of technological change — and society’s struggle to keep up — shows you how important philosophy, literature, history, and the liberal arts really are. Whether it’s algorithmic bias affecting real lives, or questions about what values we encode in AI systems, these aren’t just technical problems, but fundamentally about who we are and what we owe each other. It is true that I’m majoring in 6-5 [electrical engineering with computing] and 18 [mathematics], and of course these disciplines are extraordinarily important. But the humanities are something very important to me, as they do answer fundamental questions about who we are, what we owe to others, why people act this way or that, and how we should think through social issues. I despair when I hear brilliant engineers say they read nothing longer than a blog post. If anything, the humanities should be more important overall at MIT. 

When I was younger, I just happened across a discussion of CP Snow’s famous essay on the “Two Cultures.” In it, he talks about his scientist friends who had never read Shakespeare, and his literary friends who couldn’t explain thermodynamics. In a modest way, I’ve always thought that I’d like my education to be one that allowed me to participate in the two cultures. The essay on Levinas is my attempt to pursue this type of education.

Hours before his resignation became public Monday, David Richardson told POLITICO's E&E News that "I have no idea what you're talking about."

The next three in this series on online events highlighting interesting uses of AI in cybersecurity are online: #4, #5, and #6. Well worth watching.

World leaders have vowed to fight rising temperatures for years. Many of those pledges fade when the summits end.

The incoming South Carolina facility will help First Solar build its unusual kind of solar panels, which utilize thin-film technology.

The Pennsylvania governor's deal to trade climate regulations for a budget agreement could ripple far beyond his state's borders.

Texas is writing its first statewide plan for mass transportation as it wrestles with more residents and traffic.

Changes would damage President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's efforts to cast Brazil as an environmental leader.

The country’s gas network spans hundreds of thousands of miles and accounts for nearly half of national methane.

The country has downgraded its participation in a global forum that regulates trade in wildlife after the firing of its environment minister.

Five farmers sued state utility Korea Electric Power and its power-generating subsidiaries, alleging that their reliance on coal and other fossil fuels has accelerated climate change and damaged their crops.

Since an adjacent river breached its banks 11 days ago, the flooded riverside restaurant has become an internet sensation.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 17 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02509-5

Author Correction: The carbon hoofprint of cities is shaped by geography and production in the livestock supply chain

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 17 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02478-9

Climate change is altering the strength and position of Southern Ocean westerly winds but the ocean transport is stable. Here the authors use sea surface height to show that a poleward shift of the northern boundary and changing dynamics maintain the circumpolar transport.

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. 

Short-finned pilot wales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) eat at lot of squid:

To figure out a short-finned pilot whale’s caloric intake, Gough says, the team had to combine data from a variety of sources, including movement data from short-lasting tags, daily feeding rates from satellite tags, body measurements collected via aerial drones, and sifting through the stomachs of unfortunate whales that ended up stranded on land.

Once the team pulled all this data together, they estimated that a typical whale will eat between 82 and 202 squid a day. To meet their energy needs, a whale will have to consume an average of 140 squid a day. Annually, that’s about 74,000 squid per whale. For all the whales in the area, that amounts to about 88,000 tons of squid eaten every year...

A new bill sponsored by Sen. Hawley (D-MO), Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Britt (R-AL), Sen. Warner (D-VA), and Sen. Murphy (D-CT) would require AI chatbots to verify all users’ ages, prohibit minors from using AI tools, and implement steep criminal penalties for chatbots that promote or solicit certain harms. That might sound reasonable at first, but behind those talking points lies a sprawling surveillance and censorship regime that would reshape how people of all ages use the internet.

The GUARD Act may look like a child-safety bill, but in practice it’s an age-gating mandate that could be imposed on nearly every public-facing AI chatbot.

The GUARD Act may look like a child-safety bill, but in practice it’s an age-gating mandate that could be imposed on nearly every public-facing AI chatbot—from customer-service bots to search-engine assistants. The GUARD Act could force countless AI companies to collect sensitive identity data, chill online speech, and block teens from using the digital tools that they rely on every day.

EFF has warned for years that age-verification laws endanger free expression, privacy, and competition. There are legitimate concerns about transparency and accountability in AI, but the GUARD Act’s sweeping mandates are not the solution.

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: The guard act won't keep us safe

Young People's Access to Legitimate AI Tools Could Be Cut Off Entirely. 

The GUARD Act doesn’t give parents a choice—it simply blocks minors from AI companions altogether. If a chat system’s age-verification process determines that a user is under 18, that user must then be locked out completely. The GUARD Act contains no parental consent mechanism, no appeal process for errors in age estimation, and no flexibility for any other context.

The bill’s definition of an AI “companion” is ambiguous enough that it could easily be interpreted to extend beyond general-use LLMs like ChatGPT, causing overcautious companies to block young people from other kinds of AI services too. In practice, this means that under the GUARD Act, teenagers may not be able to use chatbots to get help with homework, seek customer service assistance for a product they bought, or even ask a search engine a question. It could also cut off all young people’s access to educational and creative tools that have quickly become a part of everyday learning and life online.

The GUARD Act’s sponsors claim these rules will keep our children safe, but that’s not true.

By treating all young people—whether seven or seventeen—the same, the GUARD Act threatens their ability to explore their identities, get answers to questions free from shame or stigma, and gradually develop a sense of autonomy as they mature into adults. Denying teens’ access to online spaces doesn’t make them safer, it just keeps them uninformed and unprepared for adult life.  

The GUARD Act’s sponsors claim these rules will keep our children safe, but that’s not true. Instead, it will undermine both safety and autonomy by replacing parental guidance with government mandates and building mass surveillance infrastructure instead of privacy controls.

All Age Verification Systems Are Dangerous. This Is No Different. 

Teens aren’t the only ones who lose out under the GUARD Act. The bill would require platforms to confirm the ages of all users—young and old—before allowing them to speak, learn, or engage with their AI tools.

Under the GUARD Act, platforms can’t rely on a simple “I’m over 18” checkbox or self-attested birthdate. Instead, they must build or buy a “commercially reasonable” age-verification system that collects identifying information (like a government ID, credit record, or biometric data) from every user before granting them access to the AI service. Though the GUARD Act does contain some data minimization language, its mandate to periodically re-verify users means that platforms must either retain or re-collect that sensitive user data as needed. Both of those options come with major privacy risks.  

EFF has long documented the dangers of age-verification systems:

• They create attractive targets for hackers. Third-party services that collect users’ sensitive ID and biometric data for the purpose of age verification have been repeatedly breached, exposing millions to identity theft and other harms.
• They implement mass surveillance systems and ruin anonymity. To verify your age, a system must determine and record who you are. That means every chatbot interaction could feasibly be linked to your verified identity.
• They disproportionately harm vulnerable groups. Many people—especially activists and dissidents, trans and gender-nonconforming folks, undocumented people, and survivors of abuse—avoid systems that force identity disclosure. The GUARD Act would entirely cut off their ability to use these public AI tools.
• They entrench Big Tech. Only the biggest companies can afford the compliance and liability burden of mass identity verification. Smaller, privacy-respecting developers simply can’t compete.

As we’ve said repeatedly, there’s no such thing as “safe” age verification. Every approach—whether it’s facial or biometric scans, government ID uploads, or behavioral or account analysis—creates new privacy, security, and expressive harms.

Vagueness + Steep Fines = Censorship. Full Stop. 

Though mandatory age-gates provide reason enough to oppose the GUARD Act, the definitions of “AI chatbot” and “AI companion” are also vague and broad enough to raise alarms. In a nutshell, the Act’s definitions of these two terms are so expansive that they could cover nearly any system capable of generating “human-like” responses—including not just general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT, but also more tailored services like those used for customer service interactions, search-engine summaries, and subject-specific research tools.

The bill defines an “AI chatbot” as any service that produces “adaptive” or “context-responsive” outputs that aren’t fully predetermined by a developer or operator. That could include Google’s search summaries, research tools like Perplexity, or any AI-powered Q&A tool—all of which respond to natural language prompts and dynamically generate conversational text.

Meanwhile, the GUARD Act’s definition of an “AI companion”—a system that both produces “adaptive” or “context-responsive” outputs and encourages or simulates “interpersonal or emotional interaction”—will easily sweep in general-purpose tools like ChatGPT. Courts around the country are already seeing claims that conversational AI tools manipulate users’ emotions to increase engagement. Under this bill, that’s enough to trigger the “AI companion” label, putting AI developers at risk even when they do not intend to cause harm.

Both of these definitions are imprecise and unconstitutionally overbroad. And, when combined with the GUARD Act’s incredibly steep fines (up to $100,000 per violation, enforceable by the federal Attorney General and every state AG), companies worried about their legal liability will inevitably err on the side of prohibiting minors from accessing their chat systems. The GUARD Act leaves them these options: censor certain topics en masse, entirely block users under 18 from accessing their services, or implement broad-sweeping surveillance systems as a prerequisite to access. No matter which way platforms choose to go, the inevitable result for users is less speech, less privacy, and less access to genuinely helpful tools.

How You Can Help

While there may be legitimate problems with AI chatbots, young people’s safety is an incredibly complex social issue both on- and off-line. The GUARD Act tries to solve this complex problem with a blunt, dangerous solution.

In other words, protecting young people’s online safety is incredibly important, but to do so by forcing invasive ID checks, criminalizing AI tools, and banning teens from legitimate digital spaces is not a good way out of this.

The GUARD Act would make the internet less free, less private, and less safe for everyone.

The GUARD Act would make the internet less free, less private, and less safe for everyone. It would further consolidate power and resources in the hands of the bigger AI companies, crush smaller developers, and chill innovation under the threat of massive fines. And it would cut off vulnerable groups’ ability to use helpful everyday AI tools, further stratifying the internet we know and love.

Lawmakers should reject the GUARD Act and focus instead on policies that provide transparency, more options for users, and comprehensive privacy for all. Help us tell Congress to oppose the GUARD Act today.

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: OPPOSe THE GUARD ACT

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.