In biology, seeing can lead to understanding, and researchers in Professor Edward Boyden’s lab at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research are committed to bringing life into sharper focus. With a pair of new methods, they are expanding the capabilities of expansion microscopy — a high-resolution imaging technique the group introduced in 2015 — so researchers everywhere can see more when they look at cells and tissues under a light microscope.

“We want to see everything, so we’re always trying to improve it,” says Boyden, the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT. “A snapshot of all life, down to its fundamental building blocks, is really the goal.” Boyden is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a member of the Yang Tan Collective at MIT. 

With new ways of staining their samples and processing images, users of expansion microscopy can now see vivid outlines of the shapes of cells in their images and pinpoint the locations of many different proteins inside a single tissue sample with resolution that far exceeds that of conventional light microscopy. These advances, both reported in open-access form in the journal Nature Communications, enable new ways of tracing the slender projections of neurons and visualizing spatial relationships between molecules that contribute to health and disease.

Expansion microscopy uses a water-absorbing hydrogel to physically expand biological tissues. After a tissue sample has been permeated by the hydrogel, it is hydrated. The hydrogel swells as it absorbs water, preserving the relative locations of molecules in the tissue as it gently pulls them away from one another. As a result, crowded cellular components appear separate and distinct when the expanded tissue is viewed under a light microscope. The approach, which can be performed using standard laboratory equipment, has made super-resolution imaging accessible to most research teams.

Since first developing expansion microscopy, Boyden and his team have continued to enhance the method — increasing its resolution, simplifying the procedure, devising new features, and integrating it with other tools.

Visualizing cell membranes

One of the team’s latest advances is a method called ultrastructural membrane expansion microscopy (umExM), which they described in the Feb. 12 issue of Nature Communications. With it, biologists can use expansion microscopy to visualize the thin membranes that form the boundaries of cells and enclose the organelles inside them. These membranes, built mostly of molecules called lipids, have been notoriously difficult to densely label in intact tissues for imaging with light microscopy. Now, researchers can use umExM to study cellular ultrastructure and organization within tissues.

Tay Shin SM ’20, PhD ’23, a former graduate student in Boyden’s lab and a J. Douglas Tan Fellow in the Tan-Yang Center for Autism Research at MIT, led the development of umExM. “Our goal was very simple at first: Let’s label membranes in intact tissue, much like how an electron microscope uses osmium tetroxide to label membranes to visualize the membranes in tissue,” he says. “It turns out that it’s extremely hard to achieve this.”

The team first needed to design a label that would make the membranes in tissue samples visible under a light microscope. “We almost had to start from scratch,” Shin says. “We really had to think about the fundamental characteristics of the probe that is going to label the plasma membrane, and then think about how to incorporate them into expansion microscopy.” That meant engineering a molecule that would associate with the lipids that make up the membrane and link it to both the hydrogel used to expand the tissue sample and a fluorescent molecule for visibility.

After optimizing the expansion microscopy protocol for membrane visualization and extensively testing and improving potential probes, Shin found success one late night in the lab. He placed an expanded tissue sample on a microscope and saw sharp outlines of cells.

Because of the high resolution enabled by expansion, the method allowed Boyden’s team to identify even the tiny dendrites that protrude from neurons and clearly see the long extensions of their slender axons. That kind of clarity could help researchers follow individual neurons’ paths within the densely interconnected networks of the brain, the researchers say.

Boyden calls tracing these neural processes “a top priority of our time in brain science.” Such tracing has traditionally relied heavily on electron microscopy, which requires specialized skills and expensive equipment. Shin says that because expansion microscopy uses a standard light microscope, it is far more accessible to laboratories worldwide.

Shin and Boyden point out that users of expansion microscopy can learn even more about their samples when they pair the new ability to reveal lipid membranes with fluorescent labels that show where specific proteins are located. “That’s important, because proteins do a lot of the work of the cell, but you want to know where they are with respect to the cell’s structure,” Boyden says.

One sample, many proteins

To that end, researchers no longer have to choose just a few proteins to see when they use expansion microscopy. With a new method called multiplexed expansion revealing (multiExR), users can now label and see more than 20 different proteins in a single sample. Biologists can use the method to visualize sets of proteins, see how they are organized with respect to one another, and generate new hypotheses about how they might interact.

A key to that new method, reported Nov. 9, 2024, in Nature Communications, is the ability to repeatedly link fluorescently labeled antibodies to specific proteins in an expanded tissue sample, image them, then strip these away and use a new set of antibodies to reveal a new set of proteins. Postdoc Jinyoung Kang fine-tuned each step of this process, assuring tissue samples stayed intact and the labeled proteins produced bright signals in each round of imaging.

After capturing many images of a single sample, Boyden’s team faced another challenge: how to ensure those images were in perfect alignment so they could be overlaid with one another, producing a final picture that showed the precise positions of all of the proteins that had been labeled and visualized one by one.

Expansion microscopy lets biologists visualize some of cells’ tiniest features — but to find the same features over and over again during multiple rounds of imaging, Boyden’s team first needed to home in on a larger structure. “These fields of view are really tiny, and you’re trying to find this really tiny field of view in a gel that’s actually become quite large once you’ve expanded it,” explains Margaret Schroeder, a graduate student in Boyden’s lab who, with Kang, led the development of multiExR.

To navigate to the right spot every time, the team decided to label the blood vessels that pass through each tissue sample and use these as a guide. To enable precise alignment, certain fine details also needed to consistently appear in every image; for this, the team labeled several structural proteins. With these reference points and customized imaging processing software, the team was able to integrate all of their images of a sample into one, revealing how proteins that had been visualized separately were arranged relative to one another.

The team used multiExR to look at amyloid plaques — the aberrant protein clusters that notoriously develop in brains affected by Alzheimer’s disease. “We could look inside those amyloid plaques and ask, what’s inside of them? And because we can stain for many different proteins, we could do a high-throughput exploration,” Boyden says. The team chose 23 different proteins to view in their images. The approach revealed some surprises, such as the presence of certain neurotransmitter receptors (AMPARs). “Here’s one of the most famous receptors in all of neuroscience, and there it is, hiding out in one of the most famous molecular hallmarks of pathology in neuroscience,” says Boyden. It’s unclear what role, if any, the receptors play in Alzheimer’s disease — but the finding illustrates how the ability to see more inside cells can expose unexpected aspects of biology and raise new questions for research.

Funding for this work came from MIT, Lisa Yang and Y. Eva Tan, John Doerr, the Open Philanthropy Project, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the U.S. Army, Cancer Research U.K., the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Lore McGovern, Good Ventures, Schmidt Futures, Samsung, MathWorks, the Collamore-Rogers Fellowship, the U.S. National Science Foundation, Alana Foundation USA, the Halis Family Foundation, Lester A. Gimpelson, Donald and Glenda Mattes, David B. Emmes, Thomas A. Stocky, Avni U. Shah, Kathleen Octavio, Good Ventures/Open Philanthropy, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program.

The 2025 Times Higher Education World University Ranking has ranked MIT first in three subject categories: Arts and Humanities, Business and Economics, and Social Sciences. 

The Times Higher Education World University Ranking is an annual publication of university rankings by Times Higher Education, a leading British education magazine. The subject rankings are based on 18 rigorous performance indicators. Criteria include teaching, research environment, research volume and influence, industry, and international outlook.

Disciplines included in the 2025 top-ranked subjects are housed in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P), and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

“The rankings are a testament to the extraordinary quality of the research and teaching that takes place in SHASS and across MIT,” says Agustín Rayo, Kenan Sahin Dean of SHASS and professor of philosophy. “There has never been a more important time to ensure that we train students who understand the social, economic, political, and human aspects of the great challenges of our time.”

The Arts and Humanities ranking evaluated 750 universities from 72 countries in the disciplines of languages, literature, and linguistics; history, philosophy, and theology; architecture; archaeology; and art, performing arts, and design. This marks the first time MIT has earned the top spot in this subject since Times Higher Education began publishing rankings in 2011.

The ranking for Business and Economics evaluated 990 institutions from 85 countries and territories across three core disciplines: business and management; accounting and finance; and, economics and econometrics. This is the fourth consecutive year MIT has been ranked first in this subject.

The Social Sciences ranking evaluated 1,093 institutions from 100 countries and territories in the disciplines of political science and international studies; sociology, geography, communication and media studies; and anthropology. The areas under evaluation include political science and international relations; sociology; geography; communication and media studies; and anthropology. MIT claimed the top spot alone in this subject, after tying for first in 2024 with Stanford University.

In other subjects, MIT was also named among the top universities, ranking third in Computer Science, Engineering, and Life Sciences, and fourth in Physical Sciences. Overall, MIT ranked second in the Times Higher Education 2025 World University Ranking.

An MIT startup’s personalized heart implants, designed to help prevent strokes, won this year’s MIT Sloan Healthcare Innovation Prize (SHIP) on Thursday.

Spheric Bio’s implants grow inside the body once injected, to fit within the patient’s unique anatomy. This could improve stroke prevention because existing implants are one-size-fits-all devices that can fail to fully block the most at-risk regions, leading to leakages and other complications.

“Our mission is to transform stroke prevention by building personalized medical devices directly inside patients’ hearts,” said Connor Verheyen PhD ’23, a postdoc in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), who made the winning pitch.

Verheyen’s co-founders are MIT Associate Professor Ellen Roche and HST postdoc Markus Horvath PhD ’22.

Spheric Bio was one of seven teams that pitched their solution at the event, which was held in the MIT Media Lab and kicked off the MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference.

Spheric took home the event’s $25,000 first-place prize. The second-place prize went to nurtur, another MIT alumnus-founded startup, that has developed an artificial intelligence-powered platform designed to detect and prevent postpartum depression. Last summer, nurtur participated in the delta v startup accelerator program organized by the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.

The audience choice award was given to Merunova, which is using AI and MRI diagnostics to improve the diagnosis and treatment of spinal cord disorders. Merunova was co-founded by Dheera Ananthakrishnan, a former spine surgeon who completed an executive MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2023.

Personalized stroke prevention

Spheric Bio’s first implants aim to solve the problem of atrial fibrillation, a condition that causes areas of the heart to beat irregularly and rapidly, leading to a dramatic increase in stroke risk. The problem begins when blood pools and clots in the heart. Those clots then move to the brain and cause a stroke.

“This is a problem I’ve witnessed firsthand in my family,” says Verheyen. “It’s so common that millions of families around the world have had to experience a loved one go through a stroke as well.”

Patients with atrial fibrillation today can either go on blood thinners, in many cases for years or even life, or undergo a procedure in which surgeons insert a device into the heart to close off an area known as the left atrial appendage, where about 90 percent of such originate.

The implants on the market today for that procedure are typically prefabricated metal devices that don’t account for the wide variations seen in patient heart anatomy. Verheyen says up to half of the devices fail to seal the appendage. They can also lead to complications and complex care pathways designed to manage those shortcomings.

“There’s a fundamental mismatch between the devices available and what human patients actually look like,” says Verheyen. “Humans are infinitely variable in shape and size, and these tissues in particular are really soft, complex, delicate tissues. It leaves you with a pretty profound incompatibility.”

Spheric Bio’s implants are designed to conform to a patient’s anatomy like water filling a glass. The implant is made of biomaterials developed over years of research at MIT. They are delivered through a catheter and then expand and self-heal to custom fit the patient.

“This gives us complete closure of the appendage for every patient, every time,” said Verheyen, who has successfully tested the device in animals. “It also allows us to reduce device-related complications and simplifies deployment for operators.”

Verheyen conducted his PhD work on medical imaging and medical physics in Roche’s lab. Roche is also the associate head of Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.

Innovations for impact

The 23rd annual pitch competition offered anyone interested in health care innovation a look at the promising new solutions being developed at universities. The event is open to all early-stage health care startups with at least one student or recent graduate co-founder.

The event was the result of a months-long process in which more than 100 applicants were whittled down over the course of three rounds by a group of 20 judges.

The final competition also kicked off the MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference, which took place Feb. 27 and 28. This year’s conference was titled From Innovation to Impact: The Changing Face of Healthcare, and featured keynotes with health care industry veterans including Chris Boerner, the CEO of Bristole Myers Squibb, and James Davis, the CEO of Quest Diagnostics.

The competition’s keynote was delivered by Iterative Health CEO Jonathan Ng, who was a finalist in the competition in 2017. Ng expressed admiration for this year’s contestants.

“It’s inspiring to look around and see people who want to change the world,” said Ng, whose company is using cameras and AI to improve colorectal cancer screening. “There’s a lot of easier industries to work in, but MIT is such a good place to find your tribe: to find people who want to make the same sort of impact on the world as you.”

Stuart Levenbach, who previously served as NOAA’s chief of staff, will join the new administration as an energy official at the Office of Management and Budget.

States are grappling with frozen federal funds and fired feds. “That is how a recession starts,” a Pennsylvania appropriator said.

Iberdrola's CEO offered an optimistic view of a U.S. offshore wind industry that has been rocked by President Donald Trump.

Vermont is too small to run its own market, a new report says. Republican gains in the November election eroded Democrats' power.

The president’s allies say they expect a positive message on energy dominance. Democrats hint they could make their displeasure known.

President Donald Trump and other officials have suggested dismantling the emergency-response agency.

About 8 in 10 Americans say they've experienced extreme weather in recent years, with half saying they've been affected by severe cold or severe winter storms.

The announcement comes as some of the world’s biggest banks recalibrate their approach to climate finance.

The electric induction stove runs on 120 volts, meaning there is no need to pay a licensed electrician to rewire to 240 volts, which many electric stoves require.

Maine’s haul of lobsters has declined every year from 2021, when it was nearly 111 million pounds, to 2024, when the haul was about 86.1 million pounds.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 03 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02254-9

Side events of annual UNFCCC Conferences of Parties are one of several channels by which non-state actors influence climate negotiation. By analysing discourse and networks of actors, this research examines how topics evolve over time and how energy interest groups gain access to agenda setting.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 03 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02268-3

Rising wealth inequality is a major challenge for this century, and climate change could further exacerbate it. Based on an overview of existing studies, this Perspective proposes a framework to advance understanding of wealth inequality in relation to climate change and climate policies.

Firefly squid is now a delicacy in New York.

Blog moderation policy.

Michele David has had a long and varied career in medicine. But, she says, it took coming to MIT nine years ago to find “a job that fully engages all of who I am.”

David, a highly accomplished physician, currently serves as chief of clinical quality and patient safety at MIT Health, the Institute’s multispecialty group practice and health resource serving the MIT community — including students, faculty, and staff, as well as affiliated families and retirees. While she began her MIT tenure as a primary care provider in 2015, David now focuses on quality improvement projects for the organization. In particular, she developed and now leads the ambulatory safety net team, which is tasked with creating protocols and workflows for completing health screenings of a variety of disorders and diseases, and for managing abnormal test results.

Much of who David is was shaped by the strong women she looked up to during her childhood in Haiti. Her father died when David was just 6 months old, leaving her mother, a young schoolteacher, with four children, the oldest just 5. Despite having many suitors, she never remarried. In Haiti’s patriarchal society, she later told David, marrying again would have yielded all the power in the household to a man, something she did not want her three young daughters to experience. David’s maternal aunt, who graduated from medical school in Haiti in 1956, completed her residency in the United States, and eventually became chief of pathology at the West Side VA Medical Center in Chicago. She was another role model for David, who nudged her toward a career in medicine. The death of her infant godson from an easily curable diarrheal illness due to the local hospital’s lack of basic medical supplies further strengthened the then-teenage David’s resolve to become someone who could make a difference.

David’s passion for public health and health equity grew as she earned her medical degree from the University of Chicago School of Medicine and completed her residency at the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan. The hospital where she trained was divided into sections for patients who could pay for their care and those who were uninsured. It was also the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and David saw firsthand how fear of the disease led to bias and discrimination against members of already-marginalized communities. At the time, David was not allowed to donate blood alongside other residents, because she was Haitian.

Her subsequent career included training and working in pulmonary critical care medicine, teaching medical students, researching health disparities among populations of Caribbean and African American women, and caring for patients, with a focus on women’s health. David also contributes her knowledge and energy to causes close to her heart. She is chair of the board for Health Equity International; an advisor to the Resilient Sisterhood Project; and a member of the Massachusetts Public Health Council.

By 2015, disillusioned by what she describes as a combination of “the glass ceiling” and “corporate medicine,” David began planning an early retirement. That’s when a member of the leadership team from MIT Health heard about her plans and gave her a call. “I told him all the reasons I wanted to quit medicine. He said, ‘It won’t be like that at MIT Health. Please come join us.’”

At MIT Health, David started as a primary care provider before gradually assuming additional administrative responsibilities for clinical quality and patient safety. While still seeing patients, she wrote and received a grant to develop an “ambulatory safety net” for the organization, a system of check-ins and procedures to help ensure that patients receive care that maximizes positive health outcomes. David started by assembling a team to create a safety net for colorectal cancer screening, which identified and contacted patients who were overdue for screenings or at high risk. Within the first year of the project, scheduled or completed colonoscopies among MIT Health patients in these groups increased from 29 to 97 percent.

Last spring, David transitioned to a full-time administrative role at MIT Health. Her team recently launched additional safety nets for breast cancer screening and behavioral health and is developing safety nets for prostate cancer and lung cancer.

And as for that early retirement? “I don’t have another 20 years left in me,” David says. “But I’d like to stay at MIT for as long as I can.”

Soundbytes

Q: How did you make the decision to assume your current, full-time role as chief of clinical quality and patient safety?

A: It was a role I already had, but I was doing it part time. I was also caring for a very complex panel of patients. When Chief Health Officer Cecilia Stuopis asked me if I would consider doing it full time, I was somewhat ambivalent, because I’ve always enjoyed taking care of patients. I thought about it and realized that it was another way of doing the same thing.

Q: What do you like about working at MIT?

A: Working at MIT Health feels like the first time I’ve been able to use my entire skill set to do my job. I wear my policy and public health hats when I’m working on ambulatory safety nets. I’m able to mentor and advise students, and I collaborate with my colleagues on patient care. I also feel fully supported by MIT Health’s leadership team. They are truly invested in me, and I feel that my work matters — not only to me and to them, but also to my co-workers and direct reports. Because of this, I am able to bring my best self to work.

Q: Have you been able to keep up with your many outside projects while working at MIT?

A: Yes. I lecture regularly on medical racism and health-care disparities at conferences and at other institutions. I continue to create and exhibit fine art quilts. Last year, in my role with the Resilient Sisterhood Project and in conjunction with “Call and Response,” an exhibition at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, I was able to bring a film and panel discussion to campus. The event focused on the “mothers of gynecology,” three enslaved women — Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy — who were forced to undergo numerous experimental surgeries without anesthesia by J. Marion Sims, the South Carolina doctor long recognized as the “father of gynecology.” This is one of the stories I started telling my medical students in the late 1990s, after one student asked me why African American patients are often so distrustful of health care. This history was not in medical textbooks at that time.

Q: What are you proudest of so far in your time at MIT?

A: Even though I’m no longer seeing my own patients in person, I’m making systemic changes that are improving health outcomes for the entire panel of patients at MIT Health.

For the fifth time in the history of the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and for the fifth year in a row, MIT swept all five of the contest’s top spots.

The top five scorers each year are named Putnam Fellows. Senior Brian Liu and juniors Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille are now three-time Putnam Fellows, sophomore Jiangqi Dai earned his second win, and first-year Qiao Sun earned his first. Each receives a $2,500 award. This is also the fifth time that any school has had all five Putnam Fellows.

MIT’s team also came in first. The team was made up of Lapate, Robitaille, and Sun (in alphabetical order); Lapate and Robitaille were also on last year’s winning team. This is MIT’s ninth first-place win in the past 11 competitions. Teams consist of the three top scorers from each institution. The institution with the first-place team receives a $25,000 award, and each team member receives $1,000.  

First-year Jessica Wan was the top-scoring woman, finishing in the top 25, which earned her the $1,000 Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize. She is the eighth MIT student to receive this honor since the award was created in 1992. This is the sixth year in a row that an MIT woman has won the prize.

In total, 69 MIT students scored within the top 100. Beyond the top five scorers, MIT took nine of the next 11 spots (each receiving a $1,000 award), and seven of the next nine spots (earning $250 awards). Of the 75 receiving honorable mentions, 48 were from MIT. A total of 3,988 students took the exam in December, including 222 MIT students.

This exam is considered to be the most prestigious university-level mathematics competition in the United States and Canada. 

The Putnam is known for its difficulty: While a perfect score is 120, this year’s top score was 90, and the median was just 2. While many MIT students scored well, the Department of Mathematics is proud of everyone who just took the exam, says Professor Michel Goemans, head of the Department of Mathematics. 

“Year after year, I am so impressed by the sheer number of students at MIT that participate in the Putnam competition,” Goemans says. “In no other college or university in the world can one find hundreds of students who get a kick out of thinking about math problems. So refreshing!” 

Adds Professor Bjorn Poonen, who helped MIT students prepare for the exam this year, “The incredible competition performance is just one manifestation of MIT’s vibrant community of students who love doing math and discussing math with each other, students who through their hard work in this environment excel in ways beyond competitions, too.”

While the annual Putnam Competition is administered to thousands of undergraduate mathematics students across the United States and Canada, in recent years around 70 of its top 100 performers have been MIT students. Since 2000, MIT has placed among the top five teams 23 times.  

MIT’s success in the Putnam exam isn’t surprising. MIT’s recent Putnam coaches are four-time Putnam Fellow Bjorn Poonen and three-time Putnam Fellow Yufei Zhao ’10, PhD ’15. 

MIT is also a top destination for medalists participating in the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) for high school students. Indeed, over the last decade MIT has enrolled almost every American IMO medalist, and more international IMO gold medalists than the universities of any other single country, according to forthcoming research from the Global Talent Fund (GTF), which offers scholarship and training programs for math Olympiad students and coaches.

IMO participation is a strong predictor of future achievement. According to the International Mathematics Olympiad Foundation, about half of Fields Medal winners are IMO alums — but it’s not the only ingredient.

“Recruiting the most talented students is only the beginning. A top-tier university education — with excellent professors, supportive mentors, and an engaging peer community — is key to unlocking their full potential," says GTF President Ruchir Agarwal. "MIT’s sustained Putnam success shows how the right conditions deliver spectacular results. The catalytic reaction of MIT’s concentration of math talent and the nurturing environment of Building 2 should accelerate advancements in fundamental science for years and decades to come.”

Many MIT mathletes see competitions not only as a way to hone their mathematical aptitude, but also as a way to create a strong sense of community, to help inspire and educate the next generation. 

Chris Peterson SM ’13, director of communications and special projects at MIT Admissions and Student Financial Services, points out that many MIT students with competition math experience volunteer to help run programs for K-12 students including HMMT and Math Prize for Girls, and mentor research projects through the Program for Research in Mathematics, Engineering and Science (PRIMES).

Many of the top scorers are also alumni of the PRIMES high school outreach program. Two of this year’s Putnam Fellows, Liu and Robitaille, are PRIMES alumni, as are four of the next top 11, and six out of the next nine winners, along with many of the students receiving honorable mentions. Pavel Etingof, a math professor who is also PRIMES’ chief research advisor, states that among the 25 top winners, 12 (48 percent) are PRIMES alumni.

“We at PRIMES are very proud of our alumnae’s fantastic showing at the Putnam Competition,” says PRIMES director Slava Gerovitch PhD ’99. “PRIMES serves as a pipeline of mathematical excellence from high school through undergraduate studies, and beyond.”

Along the same lines, a collaboration between the MIT Department of Mathematics and MISTI-Africa has sent MIT students with Olympiad experience abroad during the Independent Activities Period (IAP) to coach high school students who hope to compete for their national teams. 

First-years at MIT also take class 18.A34 (Mathematical Problem Solving), known informally as the Putnam Seminar, not only to hone their Putnam exam skills, but also to make new friends. 

“Many people think of math competitions as primarily a way to identify and recognize talent, which of course they are,” says Peterson. “But the community convened by and through these competitions generates educational externalities that collectively exceed the sum of individual accomplishment.”  

Math Community and Outreach Officer Michael King also notes the camaraderie that forms around the test. 

“My favorite time of the Putnam day is right after the problem session, when the students all jump up, run over to their friends, and begin talking animatedly,” says King, who also took the exam as an undergraduate student. “They cheer each other’s successes, debate problem solutions, commiserate over missed answers, and share funny stories. It’s always amazing to work with the best math students in the world, but the most rewarding aspect is seeing the friendships that develop.”   

A full list of the winners can be found on the Putnam website.

Rohit Karnik, the Tata Professor in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been named the new director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), effective March 1. Karnik, who has served as associate director of J-WAFS since 2023, succeeds founding director John H. Lienhard V, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering.

Karnik assumes the role of director at a pivotal time for J-WAFS, as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. Announcing the appointment today in a letter to the J-WAFS research community, Vice President for Research Ian A. Waitz noted Karnik’s deep involvement with the lab’s research efforts and programming, as well as his accolades as a researcher, teacher, leader, and mentor. “I am delighted that Rohit will bring his talent and vision to bear on the J-WAFS mission, ensuring the program sustains its direct support of research on campus and its important impact around the world,” Waitz wrote.

J-WAFS is the only program at MIT focused exclusively on water and food research. Since 2015, the lab has made grants totaling approximately $25M to researchers across the Institute, including from all five schools and 40 departments, labs, and centers. It has supported 300 faculty, research staff, and students combined. Furthermore, the J-WAFS Solutions Program, which supports efforts to commercialize innovative water and food technologies, has spun out 12 companies and two open-sourced products. 

“We launched J-WAFS with the aim of building a community of water and food researchers at MIT, taking advantage of MIT’s strengths in so many disciplines that contribute to these most essential human needs,” writes Lienhard, who will retire this June. “After a decade’s work, that community is strong and visible. I am delighted that Rohit has agreed to take the reins. He will bring the program to the next level.” 

Lienhard has served as director since founding J-WAFS in 2014, along with executive director Renee J. Robins ’83, who last fall shared her intent to retire as well. 

“It’s a big change for a program to turn over both the director and executive director roles at the same time,” says Robins. “Having worked alongside Rohit as our associate director for the past couple of years, I am greatly assured that J-WAFS will be in good hands with a new and steady leadership team.”

Karnik became associate director of J-WAFS in July 2023, a move that coincided with the start of a sabbatical for Lienhard. Before that time, Karnik was already well engaged with J-WAFS as a grant recipient, reviewer, and community member. As associate director, Rohit has been integral to J-WAFS operations, planning, and grant management, including the proposal selection process. He was instrumental in planning the second J-WAFS Grand Challenge grant and led workshops at which researchers brainstormed proposal topics and formed teams. Karnik also engaged with J-WAFS’ corporate partners, helped plan lectures and events, and offered project oversight. 

“The experience gave me broad exposure to the amazing ideas and research at MIT in the water and food space, and the collaborations and synergies across departments and schools that enable excellence in research,” says Karnik. “The strengths of J-WAFS lie in being able to support principal investigators in pursuing research to address humanity’s water and food needs; in creating a community of students though the fellowship program and support of student clubs; and in bringing people together at seminars, workshops, and other events. All of this is made possible by the endowment and a dedicated team with close involvement in the projects after the grants are awarded.”

J-WAFS was established through a generous gift from Community Jameel, an independent, global organization advancing science to help communities thrive in a rapidly changing world. The lab was named in honor of the late Abdul Latif Jameel, the founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel company and father of MIT alumnus Mohammed Jameel ’78, who founded and chairs Community Jameel. 

J-WAFS’ operations are carried out by a small but passionate team of people at MIT who are dedicated to the mission of securing water and food systems. That mission is more important than ever, as climate change, urbanization, and a growing global population are putting tremendous stress on the world’s water and food supplies. These challenges drive J-WAFS’ efforts to mobilize the research, innovation, and technology that can sustainably secure humankind’s most vital resources. 

As director, Karnik will help shape the research agenda and key priorities for J-WAFS and usher the program into its second decade.

Karnik originally joined MIT as a postdoc in the departments of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering in October 2006. In September 2007, he became an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, before being promoted to associate professor in 2012. His research group focuses on the physics of micro- and nanofluidic flows and applying that to the design of micro- and nanofluidic systems for applications in water, healthcare, energy, and the environment. Past projects include ones on membranes for water filtration and chemical separations, sensors for water, and water filters from waste wood. Karnik has served as associate department head and interim co-department head in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He also serves as faculty director of the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program in the School of Engineering.

Before coming to MIT, Karnik received a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, and a master’s and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, all in mechanical engineering. He has authored numerous publications, is co-inventor on several patents, and has received awards and honors including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award, the MIT Office of Graduate Education’s Committed to Caring award, and election to the National Academy of Inventors as a senior member. 

Lienhard, J-WAFS’ outgoing director, has served on the MIT faculty since 1988. His research and educational efforts have focused on heat and mass transfer, water purification and desalination, thermodynamics, and separation processes. Lienhard has directly supervised more than 90 PhD and master’s theses, and he is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed papers and three textbooks. He holds more than 40 U.S. patents, most commercialized through startup companies with his students. One of these, the water treatment company Gradiant Corporation, is now valued over $1 billion and employs more than 1,200 people. Lienhard has received many awards, including the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Desalination and Reuse Association.

Since 1998, Renee Robins has worked on the conception, launch, and development of a number of large interdisciplinary, international, and partnership-based research and education collaborations at MIT and elsewhere. She served in roles for the Cambridge MIT Institute, the MIT Portugal Program, the Mexico City Program, the Program on Emerging Technologies, and the Technology and Policy Program. She holds two undergraduate degrees from MIT, in biology and humanities/anthropology, and a master’s degree in public policy from Carnegie Mellon University. She has overseen significant growth in J-WAFS’ activities, funding, staffing, and collaborations over the past decade. In 2021, she was awarded an Infinite Mile Award in the area of the Offices of the Provost and Vice President for Research, in recognition of her contributions within her role at J-WAFS to help the Institute carry out its mission.

“John and Renee have done a remarkable job in establishing J-WAFS and bringing it up to its present form,” says Karnik. “I’m committed to making sure that the key aspects of J-WAFS that bring so much value to the MIT community, the nation, and the world continue to function well. MIT researchers and alumni in the J-WAFS community are already having an impact on addressing humanity’s water and food needs, and I believe that there is potential for MIT to have an even greater positive impact on securing humanity’s vital resources in the future.”

The following is a joint announcement from the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories and GlobalFoundries. 

MIT and GlobalFoundries (GF), a leading manufacturer of essential semiconductors, have announced a new research agreement to jointly pursue advancements and innovations for enhancing the performance and efficiency of critical semiconductor technologies. The collaboration will be led by MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) and GF’s research and development team, GF Labs.

With an initial research focus on artificial intelligence and other applications, the first projects are expected to leverage GF’s differentiated silicon photonics technology, which monolithically integrates radio frequency silicon-on-insulator (RF SOI), CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), and optical features on a single chip to realize power efficiencies for data centers, and GF’s 22FDX platform, which delivers ultra-low power consumption for intelligent devices at the edge.

“The collaboration between MIT MTL and GF exemplifies the power of academia-industry cooperation in tackling the most pressing challenges in semiconductor research,” says Tomás Palacios, MTL director and the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Palacios will serve as the MIT faculty lead for this research initiative.

“By bringing together MIT's world-renowned capabilities with GF's leading semiconductor platforms, we are positioned to drive significant research advancements in GF’s essential chip technologies for AI,” says Gregg Bartlett, chief technology officer at GF. “This collaboration underscores our commitment to innovation and highlights our dedication to developing the next generation of talent in the semiconductor industry. Together, we will research transformative solutions in the industry.”

“Integrated circuit technologies are the core driving a broad spectrum of applications ranging from mobile computing and communication devices to automotive, energy, and cloud computing,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of MIT's School of Engineering, chief innovation and strategy officer, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “This collaboration allows MIT’s exceptional research community to leverage GlobalFoundries’ wide range of industry domain experts and advanced process technologies to drive exciting innovations in microelectronics across domains — while preparing our students to take on leading roles in the workforce of the future.”

The new research agreement was formalized at a signing ceremony on campus at MIT. It builds upon GF’s successful past and ongoing engagements with the university. GF serves on MTL’s Microsystems Industrial Group, which brings together industry and academia to engage in research. MIT faculty are active participants in GF’s University Partnership Program focused on joint semiconductor research and prototyping. Additionally, GF and MIT collaborate on several workforce development initiatives, including through the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition, a U.S. Department of Defense Microelectronics Commons Hub.