Authorities issued evacuation advisories to tens of thousands of people in Kumamoto and six other prefectures in the region.

Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, has been named the new director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC), effective July 1. The SSRC convenes and supports researchers focused on problems and solutions at the intersection of technology and its societal impacts.

Trancik conducts research on technology innovation and energy systems. At the Trancik Lab, she and her team develop methods drawing on engineering knowledge, data science, and policy analysis. Their work examines the pace and drivers of technological change, helping identify where innovation is occurring most rapidly, how emerging technologies stack up against existing systems, and which performance thresholds matter most for real-world impact. Her models have been used to inform government innovation policy and have been applied across a wide range of industries.

“Professor Trancik’s deep expertise in the societal implications of technology, and her commitment to developing impactful solutions across industries, make her an excellent fit to lead SSRC,” says Maria C. Yang, interim dean of engineering and William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Much of Trancik’s research focuses on the domain of energy systems, and establishing methods for energy technology evaluation, including of their costs, performance, and environmental impacts. She covers a wide range of energy services — including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. Her research has applications in solar and wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission. Trancik is also known for her research on extreme events in renewable energy availability.

A prolific researcher, Trancik has helped measure progress and inform the development of solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and other low-carbon technologies — and anticipate future trends. One of her widely cited contributions includes quantifying learning rates and identifying where targeted investments can most effectively accelerate innovation. These tools have been used by U.S. federal agencies, international organizations, and the private sector to shape energy R&D portfolios, climate policy, and infrastructure planning.

Trancik is committed to engaging and informing the public on energy consumption. She and her team developed the app carboncounter.com, which helps users choose cars with low costs and low environmental impacts.

As an educator, Trancik teaches courses for students across MIT’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

“The question guiding my teaching and research is how do we solve big societal challenges with technology, and how can we be more deliberate in developing and supporting technologies to get us there?” Trancik said in an article about course IDS.521/IDS.065 (Energy Systems for Climate Change Mitigation).

Trancik received her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell University. As a Rhodes Scholar, she completed her PhD in materials science at the University of Oxford. She subsequently worked for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. After serving as an Omidyar Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, she joined MIT in 2010 as a faculty member.

Trancik succeeds Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science and director of IDSS, who previously served as director of SSRC.

Harvey Kent Bowen PhD ’71, a longtime MIT professor celebrated for his pioneering work in manufacturing education, innovative ceramics research, and generous mentorship, died July 17 in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was 83.

At MIT, he was the founding engineering faculty leader of Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) — now Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) — a program that continues to shape engineering and management education nearly four decades later.

Bowen spent 22 years on the MIT faculty, returning to his alma mater after earning both a master’s degree in materials science and a PhD in materials science and ceramics processing there. He held the Ford Professorship of Engineering, with appointments in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, before transitioning to Harvard Business School, where he bridged the worlds of engineering, manufacturing, and management. 

Bowen’s prodigious research output spans 190 articles, 45 Harvard case studies, and two books. In addition to his scholarly contributions, those who knew him best say his visionary understanding of the connection between management and engineering, coupled with his intellect and warm leadership style, set him apart at a time of rapid growth at MIT.  

A pioneering physical ceramics researcher

Bowen was born on Nov. 21, 1941, in Salt Lake City, Utah. As an MIT graduate student in the 1970s, he helped to redefine the study of ceramics — transforming it into the scientific field now known as physical ceramics, which focuses on the structure, properties, and behavior of ceramic materials.

“Prior to that, it was the art of ceramic composition,” says Michael Cima, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering in DMSE. “What Kent and a small group of more-senior DMSE faculty were doing was trying to turn that art into science.”

Bowen advanced the field by applying scientific rigor to how ceramic materials were processed. He applied concepts from the developing field of colloid science — the study of particles evenly distributed in another material — to the manufacturing of ceramics, forever changing how such objects were made.

“That sparked a whole new generation of people taking a different look at how ceramic objects are manufactured,” Cima recalls. “It was an opportunity to make a big change. Despite the fact that physical ceramics — composition, crystal structure and so forth — had turned into a science, there still was this big gap: how do you make these things? Kent thought this was the opportunity for science to have an impact on the field of ceramics.”

One of his greatest scholarly accomplishments was “Introduction to Ceramics, 2nd edition,” with David Kingery and Donald Uhlmann, a foundational textbook he helped write early in his career. The book, published in 1976, helped maintain DMSE’s leading position in ceramics research and education.

“Every PhD student in ceramics studied that book, all 1,000 pages, from beginning to end, to prepare for the PhD qualifying exams,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Ceramics in DMSE. “It covered almost every aspect of the science and engineering of ceramics known at that time. That was why it was both an outstanding teaching text as well as a reference textbook for data.”

In ceramics processing, Bowen was also known for his control of particle size, shape, and size distribution, and how those factors influence sintering, the process of forming solid materials from powders.

Over time, Bowen’s interest in ceramics processing broadened into a larger focus on manufacturing. As such, Bowen was also deeply connected to industry and traveled frequently, especially to Japan, a leader in ceramics manufacturing.

“One time, he came back from Japan and told all of us graduate students that the students there worked so hard they were sleeping in the labs at night — as a way to prod us,” Chiang recalls.

While Bowen’s work in manufacturing began in ceramics, he also became a consultant to major companies, including automakers, and he worked with Lee Iacocca, the Ford executive behind the Mustang. Those experiences also helped spark LFM, which evolved into LGO. Bowen co-founded LFM with former MIT dean of engineering Tom Magnanti.

“I’m still in awe of Kent’s audacity and vision in starting the LFM program. The scale and scope of the program were, even for MIT standards, highly ambitious. Thirty-seven successful years later, we all owe a great sense of gratitude to Kent,” says LGO Executive Director Thomas Roemer, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Bowen as mentor, teacher

Bowen’s scientific leadership was matched by his personal influence. Colleagues recall him as a patient, thoughtful mentor who valued creativity and experimentation.

“He had a lot of patience, and I think students benefited from that patience. He let them go in the directions they wanted to — and then helped them out of the hole when their experiments didn’t work. He was good at that,” Cima says.

His discipline was another hallmark of his character. Chiang was an undergraduate and graduate student when Bowen was a faculty member. He fondly recalls his tendency to get up early, a source of amusement for his 3.01 (Kinetics of Materials) class.

“One time, some students played a joke on him. They got to class before him, set up an electric griddle, and cooked breakfast in the classroom before he arrived,” says Chiang. “When we all arrived, it smelled like breakfast.”

Bowen took a personal interest in Chiang’s career trajectory, arranging for him to spend a summer in Bowen’s lab through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Funded by the Department of Energy, the project explored magnetohydrodynamics: shooting a high-temperature plasma made from coal fly ash into a magnetic field between ceramic electrodes to generate electricity.

“My job was just to sift the fly ash, but it opened my eyes to energy research,” Chiang recalls.

Later, when Chiang was an assistant professor at MIT, Bowen served on his career development committee. He was both encouraging and pragmatic.

“He pushed me to get things done — to submit and publish papers at a time when I really needed the push,” Chiang says. “After all the happy talk, he would say, ‘OK, by what date are you going to submit these papers?’ And that was what I needed.”

After leaving MIT, Bowen joined Harvard Business School (HBS), where he wrote numerous detailed case studies, including one on A123 Systems, a battery company Chiang co-founded in 2001. 

“He was very supportive of our work to commercialize battery technology, and starting new companies in energy and materials,” Chiang says.

Bowen was also a devoted mentor for LFM/LGO students, even while at HBS. Greg Dibb MBA ’04, SM ’04 recalls that Bowen agreed to oversee his work on the management philosophy known as the Toyota Production System (TPS) — a manufacturing system developed by the Japanese automaker — responding kindly to the young student’s outreach and inspiring him with methodical, real-world advice.

“By some miracle, he agreed and made the time to guide me on my thesis work. In the process, he became a mentor and a lifelong friend,” Dibb says. “He inspired me in his way of working and collaborating. He was a master thinker and listener, and he taught me by example through his Socratic style, asking me simple but difficult questions that required rigor of thought.

“I remember he asked me about my plan to learn about manufacturing and TPS. I came to him enthusiastically with a list of books I planned to read. He responded, ‘Do you think a world expert would read those books?’”   

In trying to answer that question, Dibb realized the best way to learn was to go to the factory floor.

“He had a passion for the continuous improvement of manufacturing and operations, and he taught me how to do it by being an observer and a listener just like him — all the time being inspired by his optimism, faith, and charity toward others.”

Faith was a cornerstone of Bowen’s life outside of academia. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Central Germany Mission and held several leadership roles, including bishop of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Ward, stake president of the Cambridge Stake, mission president of the Tacoma, Washington Mission, and temple president of the Boston, Massachusetts Temple. 

An enthusiastic role model who inspired excellence

During early-morning conversations, Cima learned about Bowen’s growing interest in manufacturing, which would spur what is now LGO. Bowen eventually became recognized as an expert in the Toyota Production System, the company’s operational culture and practice which was a major influence on the LGO program’s curriculum design.

“I got to hear it from him — I was exposed to his early insights,” Cima says. “The fact that he would take the time every morning to talk to me — it was a huge influence.”

Bowen was a natural leader and set an example for others, Cima says.

“What is a leader? A leader is somebody who has the kind of infectious enthusiasm to convince others to work with them. Kent was really good at that,” Cima says. “What’s the way you learn leadership? Well, you’d look at how leaders behave. And really good leaders behave like Kent Bowen.”

MIT Sloan School of Management professor of the practice Zeynep Ton praises Bowen’s people skills and work ethic: “When you combine his belief in people with his ability to think big, something magical happens through the people Kent mentored. He always pushed us to do more,” Ton recalls. “Whenever I shared with Kent my research making an impact on a company, or my teaching making an impact on a student, his response was never just ‘good job.’ His next question was: ‘How can you make a bigger impact? Do you have the resources at MIT to do it? Who else can help you?’” 

A legacy of encouragement and drive

With this drive to do more, Bowen embodied MIT’s ethos, colleagues say.

“Kent Bowen embodies the MIT 'mens et manus' ['mind and hand'] motto professionally and personally as an inveterate experimenter in the lab, in the classroom, as an advisor, and in larger society,” says MIT Sloan senior lecturer Steve Spear. “Kent’s consistency was in creating opportunities to help people become their fullest selves, not only finding expression for their humanity greater than they could have achieved on their own, but greater than they might have even imagined on their own. An extraordinary number of people are directly in his debt because of this personal ethos — and even more have benefited from the ripple effect.”

Gregory Dibb, now a leader in the autonomous vehicle industry, is just one of them.

“Upon hearing of his passing, I immediately felt that I now have even more responsibility to step up and try to fill his shoes in sacrificing and helping others as he did — even if that means helping an unprepared and overwhelmed LGO grad student like me,” Dibb says.

Bowen is survived by his wife, Kathy Jones; his children, Natalie, Jennifer Patraiko, Melissa, Kirsten, and Jonathan; his sister, Kathlene Bowen; and six grandchildren. 

Jason Sparapani contributed to this article.

Water is essential for life on Earth. So, the liquid must be a requirement for life on other worlds. For decades, scientists’ definition of habitability on other planets has rested on this assumption.

But what makes some planets habitable might have very little to do with water. In fact, an entirely different type of liquid could conceivably support life in worlds where water can barely exist. That’s a possibility that MIT scientists raise in a study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

From lab experiments, the researchers found that a type of fluid known as an ionic liquid can readily form from chemical ingredients that are also expected to be found on the surface of some rocky planets and moons. Ionic liquids are salts that exist in liquid form below about 100 degrees Celsius. The team’s experiments showed that a mixture of sulfuric acid and certain nitrogen-containing organic compounds produced such a liquid. On rocky planets, sulfuric acid may be a byproduct of volcanic activity, while nitrogen-containing compounds have been detected on several asteroids and planets in our solar system, suggesting the compounds may be present in other planetary systems.

Ionic liquids have extremely low vapor pressure and do not evaporate; they can form and persist at higher temperatures and lower pressures than what liquid water can tolerate. The researchers note that ionic liquid can be a hospitable environment for some biomolecules, such as certain proteins that can remain stable in the fluid.

The scientists propose that, even on planets that are too warm or that have atmospheres are too low-pressure to support liquid water, there could still be pockets of ionic liquid. And where there is liquid, there may be potential for life, though likely not anything that resembles Earth’s water-based beings.

“We consider water to be required for life because that is what’s needed for Earth life. But if we look at a more general definition, we see that what we need is a liquid in which metabolism for life can take place,” says Rachana Agrawal, who led the study as a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “Now if we include ionic liquid as a possibility, this can dramatically increase the habitability zone for all rocky worlds.”

The study’s MIT co-authors are Sara Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a professor in the departments of Physics and of Aeronautics and Astronautics, along with Iaroslav Iakubivskyi, Weston Buchanan, Ana Glidden, and Jingcheng Huang. Co-authors also include Maxwell Seager of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, William Bains of Cardiff University, and Janusz Petkowski of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, in Poland.

A liquid leap

The team’s work with ionic liquid grew out of an effort to search for signs of life on Venus, where clouds of sulfuric acid envelope the planet in a noxious haze. Despite its toxicity, Venus’ clouds may contain signs of life — a notion that scientists plan to test with upcoming missions to the planet’s atmosphere.

Agrawal and Seager, who is leading the Morning Star Missions to Venus, were investigating ways to collect and evaporate sulfuric acid. If a mission collects samples from Venus’ clouds, sulfuric acid would have to be evaporated away in order to reveal any residual organic compounds that could then be analyzed for signs of life.

The researchers were using their custom, low-pressure system designed to evaporate away excess sulfuric acid, to test evaporation of a solution of the acid and an organic compound, glycine. They found that in every case, while most of the liquid sulfuric acid evaporated, a stubborn layer of liquid always remained. They soon realized that sulfuric acid was chemically reacting with glycine, resulting in an exchange of hydrogen atoms from the acid to the organic compound. The result was a fluid mixture of salts, or ions, known as an ionic liquid, that persists as a liquid across a wide range of temperatures and pressures.

This accidental finding kickstarted an idea: Could ionic liquid form on planets that are too warm and host atmospheres too thin for water to exist?

“From there, we took the leap of imagination of what this could mean,” Agrawal says. “Sulfuric acid is found on Earth from volcanoes, and organic compounds have been found on asteroids and other planetary bodies. So, this led us to wonder if ionic liquids could potentially form and exist naturally on exoplanets.”

Rocky oases

On Earth, ionic liquids are mainly synthesized for industrial purposes. They do not occur naturally, except for in one specific case, in which the liquid is generated from the mixing of venoms produced by two rival species of ants.

The team set out to investigate what conditions ionic liquid could be naturally produced in, and over what range of temperatures and pressures. In the lab, they mixed sulfuric acid with various nitrogen-containing organic compounds. In previous work, Seager’s team had found that the compounds, some of which can be considered ingredients associated with life, are surprisingly stable in sulfuric acid.

“In high school, you learn that an acid wants to donate a proton,” Seager says. “And oddly enough, we knew from our past work with sulfuric acid (the main component of Venus’ clouds) and nitrogen-containing compounds, that a nitrogen wants to receive a hydrogen. It’s like one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”

The reaction could produce a bit of ionic liquid if the sulfuric acid and nitrogen-containing organics were in a one-to-one ratio — a ratio that was not a focus of the prior work. For their new study, Seager and Agrawal mixed sulfuric acid with over 30 different nitrogen-containing organic compounds, across a range of temperatures and pressures, then observed whether ionic liquid formed when they evaporated away the sulfuric acid in various vials. They also mixed the ingredients onto basalt rocks, which are known to exist on the surface of many rocky planets.

“We were just astonished that the ionic liquid forms under so many different conditions,” Seager says. “If you put the sulfuric acid and the organic on a rock, the excess sulfuric acid seeps into the rock pores, but you’re still left with a drop of ionic liquid on the rock. Whatever we tried, ionic liquid still formed.”

The team found that the reactions produced ionic liquid at temperatures up to 180 degrees Celsius and at extremely low pressures — much lower than that of the Earth’s atmosphere. Their results suggest that ionic liquid could naturally form on other planets where liquid water cannot exist, under the right conditions.

“We’re envisioning a planet warmer than Earth, that doesn’t have water, and at some point in its past or currently, it has to have had sulfuric acid, formed from volcanic outgassing,” Seager says. “This sulfuric acid has to flow over a little pocket of organics. And organic deposits are extremely common in the solar system.”

Then, she says, the resulting pockets of liquid could stay on the planet’s surface, potentially for years or millenia, where they could theoretically serve as small oases for simple forms of ionic-liquid-based life. Going forward, Seager’s team plans to investigate further, to see what biomolecules, and ingredients for life, might survive, and thrive, in ionic liquid.

“We just opened up a Pandora’s box of new research,” Seager says. “It’s been a real journey.”

This research was supported, in part, by the Sloan Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation.

The cost of solar panels has dropped by more than 99 percent since the 1970s, enabling widespread adoption of photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity.

A new MIT study drills down on specific innovations that enabled such dramatic cost reductions, revealing that technical advances across a web of diverse research efforts and industries played a pivotal role.

The findings could help renewable energy companies make more effective R&D investment decisions and aid policymakers in identifying areas to prioritize to spur growth in manufacturing and deployment.

The researchers’ modeling approach shows that key innovations often originated outside the solar sector, including advances in semiconductor fabrication, metallurgy, glass manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, construction processes, and even legal domains.

“Our results show just how intricate the process of cost improvement is, and how much scientific and engineering advances, often at a very basic level, are at the heart of these cost reductions. A lot of knowledge was drawn from different domains and industries, and this network of knowledge is what makes these technologies improve,” says study senior author Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Trancik is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Goksin Kavlak, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now a senior energy associate at the Brattle Group; Magdalena Klemun, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University; former MIT postdoc Ajinkya Kamat; as well as Brittany Smith and Robert Margolis of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The research appears today in PLOS ONE.

Identifying innovations

This work builds on mathematical models that the researchers previously developed that tease out the effects of engineering technologies on the cost of photovoltaic (PV) modules and systems.

In this study, the researchers aimed to dig even deeper into the scientific advances that drove those cost declines.

They combined their quantitative cost model with a detailed, qualitative analysis of innovations that affected the costs of PV system materials, manufacturing steps, and deployment processes.

“Our quantitative cost model guided the qualitative analysis, allowing us to look closely at innovations in areas that are hard to measure due to a lack of quantitative data,” Kavlak says.

Building on earlier work identifying key cost drivers — such as the number of solar cells per module, wiring efficiency, and silicon wafer area — the researchers conducted a structured scan of the literature for innovations likely to affect these drivers. Next, they grouped these innovations to identify patterns, revealing clusters that reduced costs by improving materials or prefabricating components to streamline manufacturing and installation. Finally, the team tracked industry origins and timing for each innovation, and consulted domain experts to zero in on the most significant innovations.

All told, they identified 81 unique innovations that affected PV system costs since 1970, from improvements in antireflective coated glass to the implementation of fully online permitting interfaces.

“With innovations, you can always go to a deeper level, down to things like raw materials processing techniques, so it was challenging to know when to stop. Having that quantitative model to ground our qualitative analysis really helped,” Trancik says.

They chose to separate PV module costs from so-called balance-of-system (BOS) costs, which cover things like mounting systems, inverters, and wiring.

PV modules, which are wired together to form solar panels, are mass-produced and can be exported, while many BOS components are designed, built, and sold at the local level.

“By examining innovations both at the BOS level and within the modules, we identify the different types of innovations that have emerged in these two parts of PV technology,” Kavlak says.

BOS costs depend more on soft technologies, nonphysical elements such as permitting procedures, which have contributed significantly less to PV’s past cost improvement compared to hardware innovations.

“Often, it comes down to delays. Time is money, and if you have delays on construction sites and unpredictable processes, that affects these balance-of-system costs,” Trancik says.

Innovations such as automated permitting software, which flags code-compliant systems for fast-track approval, show promise. Though not yet quantified in this study, the team’s framework could support future analysis of their economic impact and similar innovations that streamline deployment processes.

Interconnected industries

The researchers found that innovations from the semiconductor, electronics, metallurgy, and petroleum industries played a major role in reducing both PV and BOS costs, but BOS costs were also impacted by innovations in software engineering and electric utilities.

Noninnovation factors, like efficiency gains from bulk purchasing and the accumulation of knowledge in the solar power industry, also reduced some cost variables.

In addition, while most PV panel innovations originated in research organizations or industry, many BOS innovations were developed by city governments, U.S. states, or professional associations.

“I knew there was a lot going on with this technology, but the diversity of all these fields and how closely linked they are, and the fact that we can clearly see that network through this analysis, was interesting,” Trancik says.

“PV was very well-positioned to absorb innovations from other industries — thanks to the right timing, physical compatibility, and supportive policies to adapt innovations for PV applications,” Klemun adds.

The analysis also reveals the role greater computing power could play in reducing BOS costs through advances like automated engineering review systems and remote site assessment software.

“In terms of knowledge spillovers, what we've seen so far in PV may really just be the beginning,” Klemun says, pointing to the expanding role of robotics and AI-driven digital tools in driving future cost reductions and quality improvements.

In addition to their qualitative analysis, the researchers demonstrated how this methodology could be used to estimate the quantitative impact of a particular innovation if one has the numerical data to plug into the cost equation.

For instance, using information about material prices and manufacturing procedures, they estimate that wire sawing, a technique which was introduced in the 1980s, led to an overall PV system cost decrease of $5 per watt by reducing silicon losses and increasing throughput during fabrication.

“Through this retrospective analysis, you learn something valuable for future strategy because you can see what worked and what didn’t work, and the models can also be applied prospectively. It is also useful to know what adjacent sectors may help support improvement in a particular technology,” Trancik says.

Moving forward, the researchers plan to apply this methodology to a wide range of technologies, including other renewable energy systems. They also want to further study soft technology to identify innovations or processes that could accelerate cost reductions.

“Although the process of technological innovation may seem like a black box, we’ve shown that you can study it just like any other phenomena,” Trancik says.

This research is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energies Technology Office.

Davi Augusto Oliveira Pinto’s career in Brazil’s foreign service took him all over the world. His work as a diplomat for more than two decades exposed him to the realities of life for all kinds of people, which informed his interest in economics and public policy. 

Oliveira Pinto is now focused on strengthening his diplomatic work through his MIT education. He completed the MITx MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), which is jointly administered by MIT Open Learning and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and then applied and was accepted to the DEDP master’s program within MIT’s Department of Economics. 

“I think governments should be able to provide data-driven, research-supported services to their constituents,” he says. “Returning to my role as a diplomat, I hope to use the tools I acquired in the DEDP program to enhance my contributions as a public servant.”

Oliveira Pinto was one of Brazil’s representatives to the World Trade Organization (WTO), helped Brazilian citizens and companies abroad, and worked to improve relationships with governments in South Africa, Argentina, Italy, Spain, and Uruguay. He observed firsthand how economic disparities could influence laws and lives. He believes in a nonpartisan approach to public service, producing and sharing policy based on peer-reviewed data and research that can help as many people as possible. 

“We need public policy informed by evidence and science, rather than by politics and ideology,” he says. “My experience at MIT reinforced my conviction that diplomacy should be used to gather people from different backgrounds and develop joint solutions to our collective challenges.”

As someone responsible for dealing with international trade issues and who understands the potential negative, far-reaching impacts of poorly researched and instituted policies, Oliveira Pinto saw MIT and its world-class economics programs as potentially world-altering tools to help him advance his work. 

Advocacy and economics

Growing up in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Oliveira Pinto learned about the country’s past of economic cycles driven by exporting commodities like minerals and coffee. He also witnessed what he described as Brazil’s “eternal state of development,” one in which broad swaths of the population suffered, and very soon became aware of the impact that issues like inflation and unemployment had on the country. 

“I thought studying economics could help solve issues I observed when growing up,” he says.

Oliveira Pinto earned an undergraduate degree in economics from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and a master’s degree in public policy from Escola Nacional de Administração Pública.

Oliveira Pinto’s personal experiences and his commitment to understanding and improving the lives of his fellow Brazilians led him to enroll in the Instituto Rio Branco, Brazil’s diplomatic academy, where he was trained in a variety of disciplines. “I was drawn to investigate inequality between countries, which led to my diplomatic career,” he says. “I worked to help Brazilian migrants abroad, promoted Brazilian companies’ exports, represented Brazil at the WTO, and helped pandemic-era assistance efforts for people in Brazil’s poor border towns.”

During the pandemic, Oliveira Pinto found himself drawn to the DEDP MicroMasters program. He was able to review foundational economics concepts, improve his ability to synthesize and interpret data, and refine his analytical skills. “My favorite course, Data Analysis for Social Scientists, reinforced the critical importance of interpreting data correctly in a world where information is increasingly abundant,” he recalls. 

The online program also offered an opportunity for him to apply to study in person. Now at MIT, Oliveira Pinto is finishing his degree with a capstone project focused on how J-PAL works with governments to support the scaling of evidence-informed policies.  

J-PAL’s research center and network have built long-term partnerships with government agencies around the world to generate evidence from randomized evaluations and incorporate the findings into policy decisions. They work closely with policymakers to inform anti-poverty programs to improve their effectiveness, an area of particular interest to the Brazilian diplomat. 

“I’m trying to understand how J-PAL’s partnerships in these places are working, any lessons we can learn from successes, challenges faced, and how we can most effectively scale the successful programs,” he says.

Inside and beyond MIT

Oliveira Pinto was welcomed into a thriving, diverse community in Cambridge, a journey that was both edifying and challenging. “My family and I found a home,” he notes, observing that many Brazilians live in the area, “and it’s sobering to see so many people from my country working hard to build their lives in the U.S.”

Oliveira Pinto says working closely with members of the MIT community was one of the DEDP master’s program’s big draws. “The ability to forge connections with students and faculty while learning from Nobel laureates and accomplished researchers and practitioners is amazing,” he says. Collaborating with people from a variety of professional, experiential, and backgrounds, he notes, was especially satisfying. 

Oliveira Pinto offered special praise for MIT’s support for his family, describing it as “particularly rewarding.” “MIT offers so many different activities for families,” he says. “My wife and three daughters benefited from the support the Institute provides.” While taking advantage of his time in the States to visit Canada and Washington, D.C., they also made the most of their time in Cambridge. The family enjoyed sailing, swimming, yoga, sports, pottery, lectures, and more while Davi pursued his studies. “The facilities are awesome,” he continues.

Assessing and quantifying impact

Oliveira Pinto’s investigations have yielded some fascinating findings. “Data can be misused,” he notes. “I learned how easily data can tell all kinds of stories, so it’s important to be careful and rigorous when assessing different claims.” He recalls how, during an econometrics class, he learned about parties on opposite sides of a health insurance divide pursuing radically different ends using the same data, each side promoting different views. 

Oliveira Pinto believes his studies have improved his abilities as a diplomat, one of the reasons he’s excited about his eventual return to the public service. “I’ll return to government service armed with the skills the DEDP program and the research conducted during my capstone project have provided,” he says. “My job as a diplomat is to seek opportunities to connect with different people, investigate carefully, and find common ground,” work for which his DEDP MicroMasters and master’s studies have helped prepare him.

Completing his capstone, Oliveira Pinto hopes to draw lessons from J-PAL’s work with governments to improve constituents' quality of life. He’s helping generate case studies that may foster future collaborations between researchers and the public sector. 

“Work like this can be a good opportunity for governments interested in a research-supported, data-driven approach to policymaking,” he says. 

There are 63 million people caring for family members with an illness or disability in the U.S. That translates to one in four adults devoting their time to helping loved ones with things like transportation, meals, prescriptions, and medical appointments.

Caregiving exacts a huge toll on the people responsible, and ianacare is seeking to lessen the burden. The company, founded by Steven Lee ’97, MEng ’98 and Jessica Kim, has built a platform that helps caregivers navigate available tools and local resources, build a network of friends and family to assist with everyday tasks, and coordinate meals, rides, and care shifts.

The name ianacare is short for “I am not alone care.” The company’s mission is to equip and empower the millions of people who perform a difficult and underappreciated role in our society.

“Family caregivers are the invisible backbone of the health care system,” Lee says. “Without them, the health care system would literally collapse, but they are still largely unrecognized. Ianacare acts as the front door for family caregivers. These caregivers are often thrust into this role untrained and unguided. But the moment they start, they have to become experts. Ianacare fills that gap.”

The company has partnered with employers and health care providers to serve more than 50,000 caregivers to date. And thanks to a partnerships with organizations like Elevance Health, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), and Medicare providers, its coordination and support tools are available to family caregivers across the country.

“Ultimately we want to make the biggest impact possible,” Lee says. “From a business standpoint, the 50,000 caregivers we’ve served is a huge number. But from the overall universe of caregivers that could use our help, it’s relatively small. We’re on a mission to help all 63 million caregivers.”

From ad tech to ianacare

As an electrical engineering and computer science student at MIT in the 1990s, Lee conducted research on early speech-recognition technology as part of the Spoken Language Systems group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Following graduation, Lee started a company with Waikit Lau ’97 that optimized video advertising placement within streams. The company has gone through several mergers and acquisitions, but is now part of the public company Magnite, which places the ads on platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+.

Lee left the company in 2016 and began advising startups through programs including MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service as he looked to work on something he would find more meaningful.

“Over the years, the MIT network has been invaluable for connecting with customers, recruiting top talent, and engaging investors,” Lee says. “So much innovation flows out of MIT, and I’ve loved giving back, especially working alongside [VMS Venture Mentor] Paul Bosco ’95 and the rest of the VMS team. It’s deeply rewarding to share the best practices I’ve learned with the next generation of innovators.”

In 2017, Lee met Kim, who was caregiving for her mother with pancreatic cancer. Hearing about her experience brought him back to his own family’s challenges caring for his grandfather with Parkinson’s disease when Lee was a child.

“We realized the gaps that existed in caregiving support three decades ago still exist,” Lee says. “Nothing has changed.”

Officially launched in 2018, ianacare may seem far-removed from speech recognition or ad technologies, but Lee sees the work as an extension of his previous experiences.

“In my mind, AI got its start in speech recognition, and the intelligence we use to surface recommendations and create care plans for family caregivers uses a lot of the same statistical modeling techniques I used in speech recognition and ad placement,” Lee says. “It all goes back to the foundation I got at MIT.”

The founders first launched a free solution that allowed caregivers to connect with friends and family members to coordinate caregiving tasks.

“In our app, you can coordinate with anyone who’s interested in helping,” Lee says. “When you share a struggle with a friend or co-worker, they always say, ‘How can I help?’ But caregivers rarely go back to them and actually ask. In our platform, you can add those people to your informal care team and ask the team for help with something instead of having to text someone directly, which you’re less likely to do.”

Next, the founders built an enterprise solution so businesses could help employee caregivers, adding features like resource directories and ways to find and select various caregiving tools.

“An immense amount of local resources are available, but nobody knows about them,” Lee says. “For instance, every county in the country has an Area Agency on Aging, but these agencies aren’t marketing experts, and caregivers don’t know where to get guidance.”

Last year, ianacare began working with AARP and health care providers participating in the nationwide GUIDE model (for “Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience”) to improve the quality of life for dementia patients and their caregivers. Through the voluntary program, participants can use ianacare’s platform to coordinate care, access educational resources, and access free respite care up to $2,500 each year.

Lee says the CMS partnership gives ianacare a pathway to reach millions of people caring for dementia patients across the country.

“This is already a crisis, and it will get worse because we have an aging population and a capacity-constraint in our health care system,” Lee says. “The population above 65 is set to double between 2000 and 2040. We aren’t going to have three times the hospitals or three times the doctors or nurse practitioners. So, we can either make clinicians more efficient or move more health care into the home. That’s why we have empower family caregivers.”

Aging with dignity

Lee recalls one family who used ianacare after their son was born with a severe disease. The child only lived eight months, but for those eight months, the parents had meals delivered to them in the hospital by friends and family.

“It was not something they had to worry about the entire time their son was alive,” Lee says. “It’s been rewarding to help these people in so much need.”

Other ianacare users say the platform has helped them keep their parents out of the hospital and lessen their depression and anxiety around caregiving.

“Nobody wants to die in a hospital, so we’ve worked hard to honor the wishes of loved ones who want to age in the home,” Lee says. “We have a lot of examples of folks who, if our support was not there, their loved one would have had to enter a nursing home or institution. Ianacare is there to ensure the home is safe and that the caregiver can manage the care burden. It’s a win-win for everybody because it’s also less costly for the health care system.”

Fears around children is opening up a new market for automatic license place readers.

The Energy secretary handpicked climate contrarians to write a report that EPA is using to undermine U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases.

The state faces legal questions as it weighs imposing a tax on products made in states or nations that do not charge for carbon emissions.

A coalition of nations that tax domestic carbon emissions would impose carbon fees on certain imports from countries outside the coalition.

A study of two Dallas-area medical centers found a 170 percent increase from 2012 to 2023.

The Natural Resources Defense Council says property insurers, not policyholders, should financially back state insurers of last resort.

Buyout programs usually involve a government purchasing a frequently flooded property at market rate to reduce resident risk, cut liabilities and restore land.

Rice-producing regions like Tohoku and Hokuriku saw the least amount of rain in July on record that goes back nearly 80 years.

The Perito Moreno Glacier has started losing contact with the bedrock below, causing it to shed more ice as it inches backward.

Vanuatu, which is home to about 300,000 people spread across 83 islands, is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

In a rare squid/security combined post, a new vulnerability was discovered in the Squid HTTP proxy server.

Age verification has officially arrived in the UK thanks to the Online Safety Act (OSA), a UK law requiring online platforms to check that all UK-based users are at least eighteen years old before allowing them to access broad categories of “harmful” content that go far beyond graphic sexual content. EFF has extensively criticized the OSA for eroding privacy, chilling speech, and undermining the safety of the children it aims to protect. Now that it’s gone into effect, these countless problems have begun to reveal themselves, and the absurd, disastrous outcome illustrates why we must work to avoid this age-verified future at all costs.

Perhaps you’ve seen the memes as large platforms like Spotify and YouTube attempt to comply with the OSA, while smaller sites—like forums focused on parenting, green living, and gaming on Linux—either shut down or cease some operations rather than face massive fines for not following the law’s vague, expensive, and complicated rules and risk assessments. 

But even Reddit, a site that prizes anonymity and has regularly demonstrated its commitment to digital rights, was doomed to fail in its attempt to comply with the OSA. Though Reddit is not alone in bowing to the UK mandates, it provides a perfect case study and a particularly instructive glimpse of what the age-verified future would look like if we don’t take steps to stop it.

It’s Not Just Porn—LGBTQ+, Public Health, and Politics Forums All Behind Age Gates

On July 25, users in the UK were shocked and rightfully revolted to discover that their favorite Reddit communities were now locked behind age verification walls. Under the new policies, UK Redditors were asked to submit a photo of their government ID and/or a live selfie to Persona, the for-profit vendor that Reddit contracts with to provide age verification services. 

For many, this was the first time they realized what the OSA would actually mean in practice—and the outrage was immediate. As soon as the policy took effect, reports emerged from users that subreddits dedicated to LGBTQ+ identity and support, global journalism and conflict reporting, and even public health-related forums like r/periods, r/stopsmoking, and r/sexualassault were walled off to unverified users. A few more absurd examples of the communities that were blocked off, according to users, include: r/poker, r/vexillology (the study of flags), r/worldwar2, r/earwax, r/popping (the home of grossly satisfying pimple-popping content), and r/rickroll (yup). This is, again, exactly what digital rights advocates warned about. 

Every user in the country is now faced with a choice: submit their most sensitive data for privacy-invasive analysis, or stay off of Reddit entirely. Which would you choose? 

The OSA defines "harmful" in multiple ways that go far beyond pornography, so the obstacles the UK users are experiencing are exactly what the law intended. Like other online age restrictions, the OSA obstructs way more than kids’ access to clearly adult sites. When fines are at stake, platforms will always default to overcensoring. So every user in the country is now faced with a choice: submit their most sensitive data for privacy-invasive analysis, or stay off of Reddit entirely. Which would you choose? 

Again, the fact that the OSA has forced Reddit, the “heart of the internet,” to overcensor user-generated content is noteworthy. Reddit has historically succeeded where many others have failed in safeguarding digital rights—particularly the free speech and privacy of its users. It may not be perfect, but Reddit has worked harder than many large platforms to defend Section 230, a key law in the US protecting free speech online. It was one of the first platforms to endorse the Santa Clara Principles, and it was the only platform to receive every star in EFF’s 2019 “Who Has Your Back” (Censorship Edition) report due to its unique approach to moderation, its commitment to notice and appeals of moderation decisions, and its transparency regarding government takedown requests. Reddit’s users are particularly active in the digital rights world: in 2012, they helped EFF and other advocates defeat SOPA/PIPA, a dangerous censorship law. Redditors were key in forcing members of Congress to take a stand against the bill, and were the first to declare a “blackout day,” a historic moment of online advocacy in which over a hundred thousand websites went dark to protest the bill. And Reddit is the only major social media platform where EFF doesn’t regularly share our work—because its users generally do so on their own. 

If a platform with a history of fighting for digital rights is forced to overcensor, how will the rest of the internet look if age verification spreads? Reddit’s attempts to comply with the OSA show the urgency of fighting these mandates on every front. 

We cannot accept these widespread censorship regimes as our new norm. 

Rollout Chaos: The Tech Doesn’t Even Work! 

In the days after the OSA became effective, backlash to the new age verification measures spread across the internet like wildfire as UK users made their hatred of these new policies clear. VPN usage in the UK soared, over 500,000 people signed a petition to repeal the OSA, and some shrewd users even discovered that video game face filters and meme images could fool Persona’s verification software. But these loopholes aren’t likely to last long, as we can expect the age-checking technology to continuously adapt to new evasion tactics. As good as they may be, VPNs cannot save us from the harms of age verification. 

In effect, the OSA and other age verification mandates like it will increase the risk of harm, not reduce it. 

Even when the workarounds inevitably cease to function and the age-checking procedures calcify, age verification measures still will not achieve their singular goal of protecting kids from so-called “harmful” online content. Teenagers will, uh, find a way to access the content they want. Instead of going to a vetted site like Pornhub for explicit material, curious young people (and anyone else who does not or cannot submit to age checks) will be pushed to the sketchier corners of the internet—where there is less moderation, more safety risk, and no regulation to prevent things like CSAM or non-consensual sexual content. In effect, the OSA and other age verification mandates like it will increase the risk of harm, not reduce it. 

If that weren’t enough, the slew of practical issues that have accompanied Reddit’s rollout also reveals the inadequacy of age verification technology to meet our current moment. For example, users reported various bugs in the age-checking process, like being locked out or asked repeatedly for ID despite complying. UK-based subreddit moderators also reported facing difficulties either viewing NSFW post submissions or vetting users’ post history, even when the particular submission or subreddit in question was entirely SFW. 

Taking all of this together, it is excessively clear that age-gating the internet is not the solution to kids’ online safety. Whether due to issues with the discriminatory and error-prone technology, or simply because they lack either a government ID or personal device of their own, millions of UK internet users will be completely locked out of important social, political, and creative communities. If we allow age verification, we welcome new levels of censorship and surveillance with it—while further lining the pockets of big tech and the slew of for-profit age verification vendors that have popped up to fill this market void.

Americans, Take Heed: It Will Happen Here Too

The UK age verification rollout, chaotic as it is, is a proving ground for platforms that are looking ahead to implementing these measures on a global scale. In the US, there’s never been a better time to get educated and get loud about the dangers of this legislation. EFF has sounded this alarm before, but Reddit’s attempts to comply with the OSA show its urgency: age verification mandates are censorship regimes, and in the US, porn is just the tip of the iceberg. 

US legislators have been disarmingly explicit about their intentions to use restrictions on sexually explicit content as a Trojan horse that will eventually help them censor all sorts of other perfectly legal (and largely uncontroversial) content. We’ve already seen them move the goalposts from porn to transgender and other LGBTQ+ content. What’s next? Sexual education materials, reproductive rights information, DEI or “critical race theory” resources—the list goes on. Under KOSA, which last session passed the Senate with an enormous majority but did not make it to the House, we would likely see similar results here that we see in the UK under the OSA.

Nearly half of U.S. states have some sort of online age restrictions in place already, and the Supreme Court recently paved the way for even more age blocks on online sexual content. But Americans—including those under 18—still have a First Amendment right to view content that is not sexually explicit, and EFF will continue to push back against any legislation that expands the age mandates beyond porn, in statehouses, in courts, and in the streets. 

What can you do?

Call or email your representatives to oppose KOSA and any other federal age-checking mandate. Tell your state lawmakers, wherever you are, to oppose age verification laws. Make your voice heard online, and talk to your friends and family. Tell them about what’s happening to the internet in the UK, and make sure they understand what we all stand to lose—online privacy, security, anonymity, and expression—if the age-gated internet becomes a global reality. EFF is building a coalition to stop this enormous violation of digital rights. Join us today.

Each year, faculty and researchers across the MIT School of Engineering are recognized with prestigious awards for their contributions to research, technology, society, and education. To celebrate these achievements, the school periodically highlights select honors received by members of its departments, labs, and centers. The following individuals were recognized in spring 2025:

Markus Buehler, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the Washington Award. The award honors engineers whose professional attainments have preeminently advanced the welfare of humankind.

Sili Deng, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, received the 2025 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. The award recognizes excellence in fundamental or applied combustion science research. Deng was honored for her work on energy conversion and storage, including combustion fundamentals, data-driven modeling of reacting flows, carbon-neutral energetic materials, and flame synthesis of materials for catalysis and energy storage.

Jonathan How, the Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award. The award recognizes the best paper published annually in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics for technical merit, originality, potential impact, clarity, and practical significance.

Richard Linares, the Rockwell International Career Development Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the 2024 American Astronautical Society Emerging Astrodynamicist Award. The award honors junior researchers making significant contributions to the field of astrodynamics.

Youssef Marzouk, the Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He was honored for influential contributions to multiple aspects of uncertainty quantification, particularly Bayesian computation and measure transport.

Dava Newman, the director of the MIT Media Lab and the Apollo Program Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the Carolyn “Bo” Aldigé Visionary Award. The award was presented in recognition of the MIT Media Lab's women’s health program, WHx, for groundbreaking research in advancing women’s health.

Martin Rinard, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received the 2025 SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award. The award recognizes his fundamental contributions in pioneering the new fields of program repair and approximate computing.

Franz-Josef Ulm, the Class of 1922 Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was named an ASCE Distinguished Member. He was recognized for contributions to the nano- and micromechanics of heterogeneous materials, including cement, concrete, rock, and bone, with applications in sustainable infrastructure, underground energy harvesting, and human health.