In 2001, at the dawn of the digital age, MIT made a bold decision: to open its curriculum to the world. Through MIT OpenCourseWare — now part of MIT Open Learning — the Institute began sharing materials from nearly all of its courses online for free.  

A quarter of a century later, that decision has impacted the lives of more than 500 million people across the world who have used OpenCourseWare’s resources to expand their knowledge and develop new skills. 

“When MIT opens its doors, the world walks in,” said Dimitris Bertsimas, vice provost for open learning, at OpenCourseWare’s recent 25th Anniversary Symposium. “Twenty-five years ago, MIT made a bet on openness, generosity, and on the belief that knowledge is a public good. That bet has paid off 500 million times over.”

The impact of that bet took center stage as nearly 200 people gathered on campus for the symposium on April 8. The daylong celebration brought together faculty and staff, OpenCourseWare learners and educators, new and early funders of the program, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, Bertsimas, and others to reflect on OpenCourseWare’s global impact and the future of free and open education. 

The occasion also marked the premiere of “The Courage to Be Open: MIT OpenCourseWare and the Democratization of Knowledge.” Produced by MIT Open Learning’s Emmy Award-winning video team, the short documentary explores the origin, influence, and global reach of OpenCourseWare.

Initially announced as a 10-year initiative, MIT OpenCourseWare now offers more than 2,500 courses that span the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Learners can freely access lecture notes, syllabi, problem sets, exams, and video lectures through the MIT Learn platform, the OpenCourseWare website, and its YouTube channel, which has grown into the platform’s most popular higher education channel with more than 6 million subscribers. To extend that reach even further, the OpenCourseWare Mirror Site Program provides free copies of course content on hard drives to educational organizations with limited or costly internet access.

From an idea to a global movement

In launching OpenCourseWare, MIT sparked a global movement, inspiring other universities to create their own open course initiatives and solidifying grassroots open education efforts into worldwide communities like OE Global. “Today, [OpenCourseWare] is cited in national education strategies, by nonprofit initiatives, and by international development programs — proof that openness scales when you lead with vision and courage,” Kornbluth said.

That impact lives on in the learners who turn to the Institute’s free course materials every day — from a community college student in Boston to a teenager in Australia to medical students in Turkey. OpenCourseWare has expanded the reach of MIT’s life-changing knowledge to nearly every corner of the world and opened doors to learners of all ages and backgrounds.

For many, that access is transformative. High school senior Hinata Yamahara and Andrea Henshall, a veteran of the United States Air Force, shared how OpenCourseWare helped fuel their curiosity, support their studies, and advance their goals.

“OpenCourseWare [reduces] the barrier to entry to more specialized topics,” said Yamahara, who discovered the resources while exploring an interest in urban planning, and now credits an MIT workshop with helping him pass the Federal Aviation Administration’s Private Pilot Knowledge Test.

From access to agency

What emerges across stories is that MIT’s decision to give away its course materials exemplified its mission to advance knowledge in service of the nation and the world. Openness, noted speakers, is part of the Institute’s DNA. “It’s written into our values,” said Chris Bourg, director of libraries at MIT, where she is also the founding director of the Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship (CREOS).

Those values have also drawn thousands of supporters — from alumni and individual learners to businesses and the world’s leading philanthropic foundations — to help underwrite the initiative, and Open Learning more generally.

By making course materials not only free, but open, the Institute enables anyone to download, copy, modify, reuse, remix, and redistribute its resources for educational, non-commercial uses. “Access is powerful and absolutely necessary,” said Curt Newton, director of OpenCourseWare. “But openness goes further. It invites participation.”

For educators like Elizabeth Siler, a professor at Worcester State University in the department of business administration and economics, and Victor Odumuyiwa, an associate professor in computer science at the University of Lagos, OpenCourseWare offers a window into how MIT designs learning experiences and a foundation to bring those approaches into their own classrooms.

“I applied the same approach back home and, sincerely, I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from people getting jobs in global companies after taking the course that I designed,” Odumuyiwa said. 

For faculty on MIT’s campus, OpenCourseWare has also been transformative, fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and innovative uses of digital educational tools. Referencing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Christopher Capozzola, the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at MIT, pointed to quality education (goal 4), reduced inequalities (goal 10), and peace, justice, and strong institutions (goal 16) as a guiding equation for open education. “I believe that MIT, through OpenCourseWare and all of our open education initiatives, has committed to solving that problem,” he said. “I just wanted to roll up my sleeves and be part of that.”

A new era for open education

If the rise of the internet in the early 2000s catalyzed MIT’s decision to “open its doors to the world without requiring a key,” said Kornbluth, artificial intelligence now presents a new moment to lead.

Building on that legacy, MIT Open Learning is leading the way with the launch of MIT Learn, an AI-enabled hub for the Institute’s non-degree learning opportunities. The platform brings together innovations like AskTIM — an AI assistant that helps learners discover relevant offerings and, in select offerings, enhances understanding with guided support — and new self-paced, modular online learning experiences that prepare learners to take on complex global challenges, including AI and climate. Together, these advances move MIT closer to a future of truly personalized education at global scale, grounded in faculty expertise and research.

“Sometime in the next five years, I’m looking for a moment that rhymes with what happened in 2001,” Newton said.

With the launch of MIT Learn and Open Learning’s goal of reaching 1 billion learners in the next decade, that next chapter is already taking shape.

“The future of open learning is bright, and belongs to all of us,” Bertsimas said.

We recently updated our privacy policy for the first time since 2022. Most of the changes are clarifications, reorganizations, and improvements in transparency, particularly around how third-party tools that run parts of our site operate. But one change is substantive enough that we want to address it directly.

The Change You Should Know About: Opt-In Email Tracking

We want to know how we’re doing with our advocacy: which campaigns get your attention and which do not, which topics you are very interested in, which less so, and which not at all. It helps us to do our work better and to prioritize or rethink our strategies as we push to build support for freedom, justice and innovation around the world.

So, to give us a rough picture of how we’re doing, we are introducing the option for you to provide explicit, opt-in consent for us to see how you interact with the emails we send you. That includes whether you open emails, and whether you click on the links inside them.

We know what you’re thinking: Doesn’t EFF strongly oppose nonconsensual tracking? You bet we do. Sneaky email tracking is ubiquitous on the web and EFF’s opposition to it remains unchanged. We have never used email tracking pixels and we’re not changing that. We’re not building profiles and we’re not sharing the data and we’re definitely not selling it.

But we do want to give you the option of allowing us to learn about how our communications are landing with you. Here’s how consent will work. We will ask, and if you say yes, we’ll be able to see whether you opened an email or not, and whether you clicked on any links. That's it.

If you say no, or ignore the ask entirely, nothing will change and we’ll do no tracking.

If you say yes, you can change your mind and opt out at any time by clicking an opt-out link in any future email or by contacting membership@eff.org.

We have heard many EFF members say that EFF is one of the only organizations that they trust with consent to track their emails. That trust is important, and we do not take it lightly. But it led us to think that if we ask, enough of you would agree that we could have a better picture of how our campaigns and other emails to you are landing and that, in turn, could help us decide what to double down on and what to change.

By giving you a real ability to consent, EFF is taking a very different path than most of the web. Asking isn’t the norm; it’s more or less never an option to say no and dark patterns often make it hard even if it looks like you can. Unfortunately, estimates have shown that 2/3s of emails received by users contain tracking, regardless of whether the senders received explicit consent at the time when a recipient signs up to receive their mailings. Automatic, nonconsensual tracking doesn’t have to be the default, and it shouldn’t be.

We hope our approach works and it inspires others. It shouldn’t be an abnormality that users are not tracked by default, and that only users who feel comfortable doing so choose to consent to tracking. We hope that our example will show mailing platforms, organizations, and users that a privacy-protective approach is better and worth doing and can still give an email sender a solid understanding what campaigns and other messages resonate with recipients. We weighed this decision carefully. We know that email tracking is something we've criticized when used covertly or without meaningful consent and that many people don’t like at all. For EFF, an opt-in requirement isn't a formality. It's the key distinction between a sneaky strategy and an aboveboard relationship with you. And to us, it’s just a common sense approach based on respect.

It’s also consistent with our advocacy and approach to technology. We have said for many years that strong consumer privacy laws must require real opt-in consent before data is collected. And we have walked our talk in other ways as well, including in pushing for Do Not Track policies and in Privacy Badger, which protects you from ads and trackers that violate the principle of user consent.

Again, this behavior has been our suggestion for privacy policies, and privacy laws. In 2022 we released a guide for nonprofits that recommended the following:

Not tracking email open rates can, unfortunately, sometimes cause list “hygiene” problems, because it becomes difficult to know whether email subscribers on your list are still interested. You can send occasional emails to ensure subscribers want to receive emails, either using open or click tracking, and informing people that the purpose of that specific email is to determine active subscribers. The essential point is to let users know when you are using tracking, and to do it in a limited way when possible....

The Internet Archive found that while they preferred to use no open tracking in their emails to subscribers, too many unreachable email addresses had been added to their list over the years, and some email addresses had even become spam traps. To continue working with their email service provider, they needed to activate some tracking. They needed email open data to know whether an email address was still active or not; but they didn’t need or want gender, age, or demographic data. They settled on informing users that their email open rates are being tracked, and offering the alternate option to sign up for plain-text versions of their emails, which won't transmit any data at all.

In 2019, we recommended that all strong consumer privacy laws must include opt-in consent for data collection. We wrote:

Right to opt-in consent

New legislation should require the operators of online services to obtain opt-in consent to collect, use, or share personal data, particularly where that collection, use, or transfer is not necessary to provide the service.

Any request for opt-in consent should be easy to understand and clearly advise the user what data the operator seeks to gather, how they will use it, how long they will keep it, and with whom they will share it. This opt-in consent should also be ongoing—that is, the request should be renewed any time the operator wishes to use or share data in a new way, or gather a new kind of data. And the user should be able to withdraw consent, including for particular purposes, at any time.

Opt-in consent is better than opt-out consent. The default should be against collecting, using, and sharing personal information. Many consumers cannot or will not alter the defaults in the technologies they use, even if they prefer that companies do not collect their information.

We are sticking to those recommendations, which unfortunately are not yet the law, and following our principles.

We hope that you will feel comfortable opting in, but we also respect that you need to make that decision for yourself, and that you may need to change it as you go. We’ll do our part to make that as clear and easy as possible. And if you do agree, we’ll be grateful for getting a chance to learn a little more about how we’re doing, hopefully in ways that can make us even more effective at ensuring that technology supports freedom, justice and innovation for all the people of the world.

Other Changes: Clarity and Stronger Protections

The rest of the update is largely about being more precise and provide more transparency into our practices.

Cookies on eff.org: The new policy tightens our cookie practices. Previously, we carved out exceptions for "remember me" and logged-in users; now we don't use persistent ID cookies on the eff.org domain at all. We also clarified that other EFF-operated sites‚ like acteff.org and shopeff.org‚ have their own cookie policies and that our policies aren’t the ones that apply there. We’re not happy that you have to navigate multiple policies like this, but it’s one of the ways that the cookie ecosystem has gotten unfortunately complex. We want to be sure you know that and know where to look for all the information.

Third-party tool transparency: Similarly, while the vast majority of EFF’s public-facing websites, online tools and tech projects are created internally, self-hosted, and self-maintained, some of them are not. In this new policy, we are working to be more detailed and explicit in the new policy about those third-party services, and how they operate under their own privacy policies, not solely ours.

To help you understand exactly what choices you have when using these tools, we're publishing dedicated Privacy Guides for each of them. The first is live now for our shop, which runs on Shopify: EFF Shopify Privacy Guide. Guides for our other third-party tools are coming soon. As always, we recommend installing Privacy Badger to limit exposure from third-party tracking.

Overall, EFF believes that when a project like the Atlas of Surveillance doesn't exist, and we think it should, we build it and maintain it. But what matters most to us is protecting your digital rights. So the time required to maintain and upgrade the tools we have built has to be weighed against our need to build new projects to fight new fights. And sometimes, a tool that was needed when we built it, like EFF’s Action Center, can be replaced by something that can take some of the weight off our internal staff.

To help make space for new projects, we carefully investigate services we rely on—like our campaign tools, payment processors, and online shop—and look for third party options that are the best in the industry and offer a level of privacy our users deserve. In this new privacy policy we try to give you as much information about those third-party services as we can.

GDPR data management: We added a clear, dedicated process for users in the EU and elsewhere to request deletion of their personal data. Email info@eff.org with the subject line "GDPR Data Deletion Request" and we'll respond within the legally required timeframe.

Data retention: We reorganized and clarified how long we keep different types of records (communications, financial records, donation paperwork) into a cleaner list. The substance is unchanged, but the structure should make it easier to find what's relevant to you.

Action Center: You may notice that the previous policy included a dedicated section on our Action Center - how we handled your campaign participation data, what we retained, and so on. That section is gone because we're transitioning our campaign tools to a third-party provider. This is the kind of situation the new third-party transparency language addresses: that provider operates under its own privacy policy, which we'll link to in its dedicated Privacy Guide. Our commitment to your privacy in those contexts doesn't change‚ it just lives in a different place now.

What Hasn't Changed

The fundamentals remain what they've always been: we don't sell your information, we don't share it with third parties without your real (not manufactured or dark-patterned) consent, outside of legal requirements we cannot change. We actively push back on legal demands we believe are improper. EFF's mission is to protect your digital rights, and our own practices will continue to reflect that. The changes we’ve described above will help us in that mission.

support EFF

You can read the full updated policy at eff.org/policy. If you have questions, we're always reachable at info@eff.org.

Poor accountability, feeble control mechanisms, and insufficient legal frameworks have led to systematic human rights violations in the Americas, with no consistent remedy or reparation to victims. What's needed is to materialize essential guarantees and measures to combat repeated surveillance abuses in the region. To help build a path for solutions, EFF launches the guide Tackling Arbitrary Digital Surveillance in the Americas, adding to our extensive work leveraging human rights norms to confront state privacy violations.

The document compiles privacy, data protection, and access to information guarantees established within the Inter-American Human Rights System to provide concrete, actionable guidance to governments in the Americas to curb the vicious cycle of state digital surveillance abuses. It outlines the safeguards and institutional measures necessary to protect individuals and details rules, parameters, and standards to overcome current pernicious practices and trends. 

As concerns over national and public security intensify, countries in the region seem to increasingly normalize the pervasiveness of digital surveillance technologies and their arbitrary use by security forces as a distorted form of protection. However, no actual protection can arise from arbitrary surveillance. 

When public security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies neglect or harm settled rights in the name of national security or public order, they too become a threat. Tolerating rights violations creates the dire situation that the Freedom of Expression Special Rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights thoroughly analyzed in his report about the serious impacts of digital surveillance on freedom of expression in the Americas.

The great majority of states in Latin America have ratified the American Convention on Human Rights. As such, the parameters and rules our new guide describes stem directly from their obligations before international human rights law. State agents and institutions must take the necessary measures to make them a reality.

As EFF’s guide points out, states must implement clear and precise legal frameworks that:

• define surveillance powers and limitations;
• ensure all surveillance measures pursue legitimate aims without discriminatory ends;
• subject interference with privacy to rigorous necessity and proportionality analysis;
• require prior judicial authorization for digital surveillance measures;
• maintain detailed records of surveillance operations;
• establish independent civilian oversight institutions with technical expertise and enforcement powers;
• guarantee individuals' right to informational self-determination and proper notification; and
• provide effective remedies and reparation for victims of surveillance abuses.

States must also put in place the institutional processes and structures to give effect to these legal guarantees. As we stress in the document, States that embrace the guide’s recommendations will not only comply with their international obligations, but will also build more resilient, rights-respecting security architectures capable of addressing genuine threats without sacrificing the freedoms they exist to protect. 

Civil society leaders, activists, legal experts, public defenders, oversight institutions, and state officials committed to human rights must gather and ramp up the fight against the normalization of digital surveillance abuses in the Americas. We hope that EFF’s new guide can serve as a crucial tool in strengthening this fight, one that we have joined since our early days.

It’s nasty, but it requires physical access to the computer:

The exploit, named YellowKey, was published earlier this week by a researcher who goes by the alias Nightmare-Eclipse. It reliably bypasses default Windows 11 deployments of BitLocker, the full-volume encryption protection Microsoft provides to make disk contents off-limits to anyone without the decryption key, which is stored in a secured piece of hardware known as a trusted platform module (TPM). BitLocker is a mandatory protection for many organizations, including those that contract with governments...

Automakers are concerned that a little-noticed regulatory tweak could eventually force them to quadruple their electric vehicle production.

The Trump administration told a federal court that it's considering intervening in a case by the NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center against the billionaire's company xAI.

It's cheap and easy, and supporters see plug-in solar as a way to drive a bigger cultural shift around renewable energy. But obstacles remain.

The state-chartered insurer of last resort continues to expand. But a slowing growth rate suggests market improvements, officials say.

Although he holds stock in oil and gas companies that would be affected by the decision, Justice Samuel Alito doesn’t have holdings in the companies in this specific appeal.

The Trump administration is working to undo the 2024 greenhouse gas standards for coal- and gas-fired power plants.

Aerosols reduced global solar generation by 5.8 percent in 2023, researchers said.

According to data collected by farming advocates, more than 600 of the states's 6,500 farms reported nearly $40 million in damage.

The proposal, due Tuesday, still offers EU producers a partial climate reprieve, but plans to weaken the carbon levy have been dropped.

The decision is the latest blow to international efforts to combat global warming.

A startup making emergency housing cheaper and faster to deploy won this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition on May 12.

Uplift Microhome is building reusable, modular housing units to provide housing on demand to people affected by natural disasters and other emergencies. Each of the company’s homes has its own batteries and water reservoir, allowing them to quickly be transported and placed off-grid.

“Every year, millions of Americans are displaced by natural disasters,” said co-founder Charlie Nitschelm, who is in MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations program, earning a master’s in engineering and an MBA. “If they're lucky, they can stay with friends or family. If they’re not so lucky, they could end up in a homeless shelter. But disasters aren’t just two-week problems. It takes months, sometimes years, to get back to what life was like before. Bottom line: We lack dignified and affordable housing after disasters.”

Uplift Microhome was one of seven teams chosen to pitch at the final event, which took place inside a packed Kresge Auditorium. Each team got five minutes to pitch their startups before a few minutes of questioning from judges.

This year’s competition started in April with more than 80 applications. The program’s judges selected 16 teams to compete in the semifinal before whittling that number down to the finalist teams for Tuesday’s event.

“This competition isn’t just about one big night,” $100K managing director and MIT Sloan School of Management student Celine Christory said. “It’s a year-long journey for our organizers and students. It kicks off with the ‘Pitch’ event in December, moves to ‘Accelerate’ in March, and culminates in the ‘Launch’ event.”

In the pitch that won the $100,000 Danny Lewin Grand Prize, Nitschelm said it takes an average of four months for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to deploy single-use housing after a disaster. That’s because these homes require power and utilities in addition to extensive foundation preparation.

“As a result, less than 1 percent of survivors actually receive a physical home,” Nitschelm said. “The rest get a check and are told to go figure it out. This isn’t just our opinion. The Department of Homeland Security audited FEMA and recommended providing a cost-effective housing alternative that allows disaster survivors to stay close to their home.”

Uplift’s homes can be transported on the back of a tractor trailer and deployed using a standard forklift. In addition to its battery and water reservoir, the homes feature self-leveling bases that allow them to be deployed on uneven terrain.

“That dramatically simplifies delivery, installation, and deactivation to the point where you can economically recover, refurbish, and redeploy the unit,” says co-founder Trevor O’Leary, a student at Harvard Business School.

The company has already built a home and believes it can manufacture each unit at a cost similar to the cheapest tractor trailer while delivering housing in hours. The company expects the marginal cost of reusing each unit to be an order of magnitude less expensive than current solutions. Down the line, it plans to deploy homes to combat housing insecurity, for seasonal workers and during construction projects. It plans to manufacture its homes in the United States.

The second-place $50,000 David T. Morgenthaler Founder’s Prize was awarded to the startup Mohan, which is using generative artificial intelligence to map the Earth’s subsurface in three dimensions. The company is deploying its technology to help mining companies decide where to drill, starting by targeting copper deposits.

“Everyone is talking about AI and chips, but no one is talking about what they sit on: copper,” said co-founder Hongze Bo, a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “Every cable, GPU, and data center depends on copper. By 2030, we’re going to be 4 million tons of copper short. But we don't know where the next deposit is. Today we just drill and hope.”

The core of Mohan’s technology is a diffusion AI model that iteratively removes noise from subsurface data to create underground scans. The company also develops its own subsurface data.

“We built a full, 3D subsurface model using generative AI,” explained Bo. “It’s the same technology behind [image generation tools] Sora and Midjourney.”

The third place $5,000 prize went to Iceberg Systems, which is using autonomous AI agents to predict how risk cascades across the economy. The company invented a new class of AI systems at MIT that coordinates millions of AIs to simulate how risks emerge through interaction. It has been working with the Department of Energy.

“Iceberg simulates behaviors across millions of market participants, from brokers to consumers to institutions, to simulate and predict how shocks cascade through their interactions and create systemic risk in the economy,” says co-founder and MIT PhD student Ayush Chopra.

The $5,000 Audience Choice Prize went to Pixology, an agentic AI platform that creates on-brand, sponsor-ready sports content to help monetize live moments.

The other finalists that presented at this year’s event were:

• NeuralPhysics, which is building foundation physics models and agents for hardware design simulation and manufacturing;
• DesignFlownAI, a design intelligence app embedded in computer-aided design software to give engineers insights in real time; and
• Auto Lab, an autonomous AI platform that helps teams build better models faster. 

The $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is one of MIT’s annual flagship entrepreneurial events. It began more than 30 years ago when a group of students, along with the late Ed Roberts, who was the founder and chair of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, decided to start a startup pitch competition.

The prize started at $10,000 then grew to $50,000 before reaching today’s $100,000 grand prize. Past participants include HubSpot, Akamai, and Lightmatter.

In addition to the prizes, teams received mentorship from venture capitalists, serial entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and attorneys; funding for prototypes; business plan feedback; and more.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 18 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02658-1

The authors consider connectivity—specifically, the functional effectiveness of climate connectivity (FECC)—under climate change. Under high emissions (SSP5-8.5), FECC is projected to decline across 77% of the global land area by 2061–2080, risking ecological isolation and subsequent biodiversity loss.

Article about the bigfin squid.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

MIT graduate students are working with leaders from the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia to explore strategies for economic development, infrastructure, and innovation during wartime conditions.

As part of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) spring course 11.S941 (Innovating in Ukraine), DUSP hosted a delegation of five Ukrainian leaders from Vinnytsia, a city region of 400,000 people located approximately 280 kilometers from Kyiv in central Ukraine. The course, taught by professor of the practice Elisabeth Reynolds, is a practicum in which students work with a “client” for the semester on specific projects or issues the city would like to address and provide a final report or deliverable.

The city of Vinnytsia, which had two representatives on the trip, has focused on building out its “innovation ecosystem” across key parts of its economy. Amid the ongoing war with Russia, the country has accelerated its long-time expertise in information technology in both civilian and military contexts. Examples include the digitalization of government services, such that many services are accessible by cellphone through the e-governance app Diia, as well as the development of a rapidly evolving drone industry.

The 13 graduate students, who draw from the School of Architecture and Planning and the MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as Harvard University’s Kennedy School and Graduate School of Design, have worked with members of the city government and Vinnytsia National Technical University on a range of projects focused on the city’s future growth. The projects include developing an agro-food cluster to facilitate Ukraine’s integration into the European Union; transportation and logistics to support economic growth in the city and enhance its role as a regional hub; improving the city’s and country’s electronic waste management; and developing the city’s creative and entrepreneurial talent to retain and attract workers.

While in Cambridge for the week, the visitors and students toured a number of places and organizations that engage in innovation. A trip to Boston City Hall to meet with Kairos Shen, Boston’s chief city planner and a former professor of the practice at the MIT Center for Real Estate, highlighted the ways in which the built environment can facilitate activities and interactions to foster a more innovative city. Tours of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, Greentown Labs in Somerville, and MassChallenge in Boston provided examples of the myriad ways the region supports entrepreneurs through shared workspace, incubators, and network development.

“We are very interested in partnering with some of these organizations,” said Dmitry Sofyna, CEO and co-founder of WINSTARS.AI, an R&D center in Ukraine focused on AI applications. “We want to transform Ukraine from a major player in engineering and scientific outsourcing into a hub for creating large-scale tech companies in defense, medicine, and energy.” Vinnytsia is currently building Crystal Technology Park, one of the largest technology parks in Ukraine.

Usually during a practicum, students travel to the host location to spend a week during Independent Activities Period (IAP) or spring break learning about the city or region. In the case of the collaboration with Vinnytsia — an outgrowth of the MIT-Ukraine initiative and the Ukraine Community Recovery Academy, with which DUSP has been working for two years — the students are unable to travel to Ukraine due to the war. With the help of a generous alumnus, DUSP instead brought the Ukrainian delegation to Cambridge so that there could be in-person exchange between the students and the Vinnytsia partners.

“It’s been an amazing trip,” said Yanna Chaikovska, director of Vinnytsia’s Institute for Urban Development. “We are planning for the future because that is what we must do. Ukraine has faced many challenges in the past and always worked in small and big ways to move forward. MIT is helping us do this.”

Nick Durham, a joint DUSP/MIT Sloan master’s student, added: “I am continually inspired by the resilience of the Ukrainian people and how they are finding creative ways to build a better future. In many ways, Ukrainian innovation is serving as a model for reimagining industries and complex economic systems.”

The collaboration reflects a broader effort within DUSP to engage with cities facing complex economic and geopolitical challenges through applied, practice-based research. Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, spoke of this effort during a panel discussion with the Ukrainian visitors, noting that “with so much conflict in the world today, SA+P must create new ways to help cities rebuild, whether in Ukraine or elsewhere.” 

That there is tremendous potential for nanotechnology to transform cancer detection and treatment is a vision that has guided faculty at the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine through its first 10 years. 

On April 9, the center gathered researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, industry collaborators, and members of the public at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research galleries to celebrate a milestone anniversary and reflect on its journey.

“Our purpose has always been clear: to empower discovery and community in nanomedicine at MIT,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, faculty director at the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine and the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

“A decade in, we are seeing that vision materialize not just in publications, but in our community, our startups, and ultimately, in patients whose lives are being changed,” Bhatia told an audience of about 150 gathered in person for the celebration.

The event featured an overview of the Marble Center by Bhatia and a perspective on nanomedicine by Robert S. Langer, the David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor and faculty member at the Marble Center. 

A panel on translational nanomedicine followed the talks. It was moderated by Susan Hockfield, president emerita and professor of neuroscience at MIT, and included Noor Jailkhani, former MIT postdoc in the laboratory of the late MIT professor of biology Richard Hynes and CEO, co-founder and president of Matrisome Bio; Peter DeMuth ’13, chief scientific officer at Elicio Therapeutics; Vadim Dudkin, founding chief technology officer at Soufflé Therapeutics; and Viktor Adalsteinsson ’15, co-founder of Amplifyer Bio and director of the Gerstner Center for Cancer Diagnostics at the Broad Institute.

A decade of impact in nanomedicine

Established in 2016 through a generous gift from Kathy and Curt Marble ’63, the Marble Center brings together leading Koch Institute faculty members and their teams to focus on grand challenges in cancer detection, treatment, and monitoring through miniaturization and convergence — the blending of the life and physical sciences with engineering, a core concept fueling multidisciplinary research at the Koch Institute. 

At the center’s founding, Bhatia and Langer were joined by five additional faculty members: Daniel G. Anderson, professor of chemical engineering and member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science; Angela M. Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor in the departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering; Michael Birnbaum, professor of biological engineering; Paula T. Hammond, Institute professor and dean of the School of Engineering; and Darrell J. Irvine, who is now professor and vice-chair at the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

“Over the past decade, the center and its member laboratories have trained close to 500 researchers. Among them, 109 have become faculty in 79 clinical and research universities. We also have worked in close collaboration with clinical and industry partners to produce the results you are seeing today,” said Tarek Fadel, associate director of the Marble Center and director of strategic alliance at the Koch Institute. 

“Twenty-three startup companies have emerged from Marble Center laboratories during that time with companies such as Cision Vision, Soufflé Therapeutics, Orna Therapeutics, Matrisome Bio, Amplifyer Bio, Gensaic, among several others that hold so much promise for the early detection of disease and drug delivery,” Fadel added.

The Marble Center has launched several topical programs aimed at trainee development and industry engagement. At monthly seminars, trainees at the Marble Center lead an open forum on emerging issues in their fields. The Convergence Scholars Program, which was originally launched in 2017 to further the development of postdocs beyond the laboratory bench, is now a competitive award program offered to postdocs at the Koch Institute. Through an industry affiliate program, the center worked closely with several key players in the field of nanoscience. Industry collaborators mentor trainees and participate as judges in an annual poster symposium. 

More recently, MIT-wide grants have catalyzed new collaborations: In 2023, the Global Oncology in Nanomedicine grant supported a project on leveraging AI-based approaches to speed the development of RNA vaccines and other RNA therapies. The project was led by Giovanni Traverso, the Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Professor and a professor of mechanical engineering.

From lab to clinic: Lessons in nanomedicine translation

Panelists at the anniversary event shared candid reflections on the often messy, but exhilarating process of turning their ideas into commercial technologies. 

DeMuth described how Elicio Therapeutics, whose core technologies originated from his graduate research in Irvine’s group, harnesses the natural power of the lymph nodes to generate enhanced immune responses against tumors. The amphiphile platform uses the body’s natural albumin transport system to “shuttle” medicines into the lymph nodes, boosting immune cell activation. Elicio is now advancing their platform through a Phase 2 trial in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and colorectal cancer.  

Jailkhani co-founded Matrisome Bio with Bhatia and Hynes. Matrisome Bio is pioneering a new class of therapies, small protein binders called nanobodies that deliver potent payloads directly to the extracellular matrix of tumors and metastases while sparing normal tissues. Matrisome Bio is currently testing radioligand modalities with their targeting platform for the treatment of cancer. 

Adalsteinsson co-founded Amplifyer Bio with Bhatia and J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. (1921) and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering and associate director of the Koch Institute, with the goal of developing priming agents for liquid biopsy. Priming agents injected before a blood draw transiently slow the clearance of cell-free DNA from the bloodstream, thus allowing up to 100-fold more tumor DNA to be recovered for liquid biopsy applications. While injection for medical diagnostics has been done for decades in the context of imaging scans, Amplifyer Bio’s approach would be the first of its kind in the field of liquid biopsy.

Dudkin described Soufflé Therapeutics’ vision to enable targeted delivery with receptor-mediated uptake to any type of cell in the human body. Soufflé Therapeutics is working to engineer cell-specific ligands to deliver siRNA-based medicines that are precise and transferred across the cell membrane to their target, by combining proprietary technologies for identification of cell-specific receptors, ligand optimization, and potent siRNA engineering. 

Panelists stressed that successful translation requires complex choices. While platform technologies can theoretically address many cancer problems, startups must focus on specific indications and clinical modalities to succeed in resource-limited, commercial settings. While the academic lab offers freedom to explore multiple applications, commercialization demands strategic narrowing of scope. 

Reproducibility during scale-up emerged as another critical consideration: Founders building platform companies must demonstrate not only that their technology works, but that their underlying discovery is reproducible and robust enough to support a business. All panelists agreed that thinking about manufacturability early in research, rather than as an afterthought, significantly improves a startup’s path to the clinic. Highlighting tension between selecting cutting-edge approaches and managing their inherent regulatory risks, they recommended minimizing risk by leveraging established processes and chemistries that have already been validated in approved drugs.

Finally, panelists highlighted the importance of institutional collaborations, particularly with centers like the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine. These partnerships offer access to collaborative, mission-driven researchers who can push technological boundaries, while startups maintain focus on narrow clinical applications. Panelists emphasized that faculty collaborators, such as at the Marble Center, often provide “big sky thinking” that explores new directions and applications that complement the company’s core mission.

The next chapter in nanomedicine at MIT

As the Marble Center enters its second decade, the community is focused on expanding collaborations, leveraging advances in computation and other intersecting disciplines, and exploring new disease indications. 

“The next 10 years will be defined by our ability to leverage insights gained at the nanoscale to push the boundaries of precision medicine. The Marble Center is in a unique position to do just that, as we evolve this incredible community at MIT to be a global hub for nanomedicine research,” said Bhatia. 

Bhatia also announced that in June, the Marble Center will launch a new grant, Integrated Nanoscale Sensing, Imaging, and Health Technologies (INSIHT), aimed at advancing new imaging and sensing technologies for precision medicine. 

Similarly, panelists expressed optimism about nanomedicine’s transformative potential, centered on precision medicine. The field, they argued, will focus on minimizing side effects while opening previously unavailable therapeutic windows — enabling treatments that are fundamentally more targeted and effective. This precision could render many currently untreatable diseases manageable, or even curable, while also enabling in some cases the repurposing of drugs that failed in earlier clinical contexts. 

“Ten years ago, Sangeeta, Tyler Jacks, and the Marble Center community had a vision” said Matthew Vander Heiden, director of the Koch Institute and Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology. 

“Today, that vision is creating a place where bold ideas turn into transformative advances that can help cancer patients and non-cancer patients as well. It is exciting to see this momentum in nanomedicine at MIT and what will happen in the coming decade.” 

One day after the announcement of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) outlined the implications of the war in the Middle East on the global energy system and the world’s economy, offering his expertise to an MIT audience.

“This is the largest energy crisis we’ve ever had in the world,” Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said at the MIT Energy Initiative’s (MITEI) Earth Day Colloquium on April 8. Birol put the current disruption of the world’s energy markets into historical perspective, shared what he believes will be the long-term impacts of this war — even in the best-case scenario where the ceasefire paves a path toward peace — and emphasized the need to create a more sustainable, resilient system moving forward.

In 1973, and again in 1979, there were oil crises that led the world economy into recession, with many countries — especially those with developing economies — spiraling into debt. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a natural gas crisis. “The current crisis, the amounts of oil and gas we’ve lost, is bigger than all those three put together,” Birol stated. According to data received two hours before the seminar, Birol confirmed that 80 energy facilities in the Middle East had been damaged, with over one-third of those having been severely damaged.

The IEA has played a significant role in the global response to the war. “Our job is to have a real-world impact,” said Birol. Earlier in the conflict, after making clear to policymakers and members of the press the scale of the problem at hand, the IEA turned to its member countries — which are required to have significant oil stock reserves — to bring their reserves to the market. “Since the disruption was so big, we brought all the countries together, which is not easy,” Birol said. “We released 400 million barrels of oil, which is the highest we have ever done. This calmed markets and put downward pressure on prices.” The IEA also released a suite of recommendations for conserving oil quickly, many of which countries around the world are already implementing, said Birol.

The implications of this crisis are far-reaching, and will vary in severity depending on how long the war lasts and how quickly normal operations resume afterwards — which could take some time, considering the extent of the damage to the Middle East’s energy infrastructure, Birol said.

Birol explained the more immediate impacts of the war on the gas industry. Although the natural gas industry has presented itself as a reliable, affordable, and flexible energy source, Birol highlighted that the two major gas crises in the last four years have brought that assertion into question.

“Is [natural gas] still reliable? Is it still flexible? Is it still affordable? After these two big crises, the natural gas industry needs to work hard to regain its brand,” he said.

Birol also outlined three potential outcomes that this shift may bring to the renewable energy sector. First, there is historical precedent for building up nuclear power plants in response to the oil crises of the 1970s. “Around 45 percent of nuclear power plants operating today were built as a response to those crises,” said Birol. He believes there will be another large push for nuclear power, including small nuclear reactors.

Second, renewables may be the biggest beneficiaries of this situation, he said. “In Europe, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the renewable annual installations increased by a factor of three,” he said.

Third, especially in Asia, we will likely see an increase in the market penetration of electric vehicles, Birol said. This is especially important to note because Asia is the center of current oil demand growth, but the adoption of more electric vehicles could have an impact on that, he suggested. Previous crises have also led to car manufacturers improving the fuel efficiency of their cars.

“The energy security premium will be a factor of the energy trade in the future, in addition to the cost of energy,” said Birol, speaking to the longer-term effects on the global energy market. “Countries will be more careful now with whom they are trading.”

Addressing the current crisis also necessitates changes to our energy system going forward, according to Birol. He explained that the entire global economy is being held hostage by the 50 kilometers of the Strait of Hormuz, which is a critical path not only for oil and gas shipments, but for materials used to make fertilizer, which are needed to feed the world’s population, and materials such as helium, which are needed to manufacture products like cell phones.

“I'm afraid that after this is finished, some of the countries will come back faster because they have stronger financial muscles, better engineering capabilities, and better technologies, whereas other countries will suffer,” he said. “It will be, in my view, not easy for the global economy. I believe who will be suffering under this economic damage will be mainly developing countries.”

The burden on developing countries will not only come in the form of energy prices, but also lasting impacts on fertilizer consumption, food security, and food prices, which Birol emphasized is a global problem. “What should be the response to have a more secure, but also more sustainable, future for everybody?” he asked.

Birol suggested the best possible outcome to the current global energy and economic disruption would be if the ceasefire leads to a peaceful settlement of the war. Still, this “best possible outcome” includes significant risk for much of the world.

If there is a settlement of peace, Birol said he expects oil and the gas production in the region to restart. He noted that there are about 200 fully laden oil tankers and 15 loaded liquid natural gas ships that could leave the Gulf fairly quickly if the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens.

“But I don’t think that in a very short period of time we will go back where we were before the war,” Birol said. “And this may keep the prices at elevated levels. This is surely not good news, especially in the emerging world. I would be surprised if we don’t see significant inflationary pressures in Asian developing countries, in Africa, and in Latin America,” Birol said. “In addition to that, the petrochemical industry, fertilizers, we will discover how important those commodities are for the supply chains we have … I expect a bit of volatility in the markets.”

This speaker series highlights energy experts and leaders at the forefront of the scientific, technological, and policy solutions needed to transform our energy systems. Visit the MIT Energy Initiative’s events page for more information on this and additional events. The series will return this fall.