An earthquake typically sets off ruptures that ripple out from its underground origins. But on rare occasions, seismologists have observed quakes that reverse course, further shaking up areas that they passed through only seconds before. These “boomerang” earthquakes often occur in regions with complex fault systems. But a new study by MIT researchers predicts that such ricochet ruptures can occur even along simple faults.

The study, which appears today in the journal AGU Advances, reports that boomerang earthquakes can happen along a simple fault under several conditions: if the quake propagates out in just one direction, over a large enough distance, and if friction along the rupturing fault builds and subsides rapidly during the quake. Under these conditions, even a simple straight fault, like some segments of the San Andreas fault in California, could experience a boomerang quake.

These newly identified conditions are relatively common, suggesting that many earthquakes that have occurred along simple faults may have experienced a boomerang effect, or what scientists term “back-propagating fronts.”

“Our work suggests that these boomerang quakes may have been undetected in a number of cases,” says study author Yudong Sun, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “We do think this behavior may be more common than we have seen so far in the seismic data.”

The new results could help scientists better assess future hazards in simple fault zones where boomerang quakes could potentially strike twice.

“In most cases, it would be impossible for a person to tell that an earthquake has propagated back just from the ground shaking, because ground motion is complex and affected by many factors,” says co-author Camilla Cattania, the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor of Geophysics at MIT. “However, we know that shaking is amplified in the direction of rupture, and buildings would shake more in response. So there is a real effect in terms of the damage that results. That’s why understanding where these boomerang events could occur matters.”

Keep it simple

There have been a handful of instances where scientists have recorded seismic data suggesting that a quake reversed direction. In 2016, an earthquake in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean rippled eastward, and then seconds later richocheted back west. Similar return rumblers may have occurred in 2011 during the magnitude 9 earthquake in Tohoku, Japan, and in 2023 during the destructive magnitude 7.8 quake in Turkey and Syria, among others.

These events took place in various fault regions, from complex zones of multiple intersecting fault lines to regions with just a single, straight fault. While seismologists have assumed that such complex quakes would be more likely to occur in multifault systems, the rare examples along simple faults got Sun and Cattania wondering: Could an earthquake reverse course along a simple fault? And if so, what could cause such a bounce-back in a seemingly simple system?

“When you see this boomerang-like behavior, it is tempting to explain this in terms of some complexity in the Earth,” Cattania says. “For instance, there may be many faults that interact, with earthquakes jumping between fault segments, or fault surfaces with prominent kinks and bends. In many cases, this could explain back-propagating behavior. But what we found was, you could have a very simple fault and still get this complex behavior.”

Faulty friction

In their new study, the team looked to simulate an earthquake along a simple fault system. In geology, a fault is a crack or fracture that runs through the Earth’s crust. An earthquake begins when the stress between rocks on either side of the fault, suddenly decreases, and one side slides against the other, setting off seismic waves that rupture rocks all along the fault. This seismic activity, which initiates deep in the crust, can sometimes reach and shake up the surface.

Cattania and Sun used a computer model to represent the fundamental physics at play during an earthquake along a simple fault. In their model, they simulated the Earth’s crust as a simple elastic material, in which they embedded a single straight fault. They then simulated how the fault would exhibit an earthquake under different scenarios. For instance, the team varied the length of the fault and the location of the quake’s initation point below the surface, as well as whether the quake traveled in one versus two directions.

Over multiple simulations, they observed that only the unilateral quakes — those that traveled in one direction — exhibited a boomerang effect. Specifically, these quakes seemed to include a type that seismologists term “back-propagating” events, in which the rumbler splits at some point along the fault, partly continuing in the same direction and partly reversing back the way it came.

“When you look at a simulation, sometimes you don’t fully understand what causes a given behavior,” Cattania says. “So we developed mathematical models to understand it. And we went back and forth, to ultimately develop a simple theory that tells you should only see this back-propagation under these certain conditions.”

Those conditions, as the team’s new theory lays out, have to do with the friction along the fault. In standard earthquake physics, it’s generally understood that an earthquake is triggered when the stress built up between rocks on either side of a fault, is suddenly released. Rocks slide against each other in response, decreasing a fault’s friction. The reduction in fault friction creates a positive feedback that facilitates further sliding, sustaining the earthquake.

However, in their simulations, the team observed that when a quake travels along a fault in one direction, it can back-propagate when friction along the fault goes down, then up, and then down again.

“When the quake propagates in one direction, it produces a “breaking’’ effect that reduces the sliding velocity, increases friction, and allows only a narrow section of the fault to slide at a time,” Cattania says. “The region behind the quake, which stops sliding, can then rupture again, because it has accumulated more stress to slide again.”

The team found that, in addition to traveling in one direction and along a fault with changing friction, a boomerang is likely to occur if a quake has traveled over a large enough distance.

“This implies that large earthquakes are not simply ‘scaled-up’ versions of small earthquakes, but instead they have their own unique rupture behavior,” Sun says.

The team suspects that back-propagating quakes may be more common than scientists have thought, and they may occur along simple, straight faults, which are typically older than more complex fault systems.

“You shouldn’t only expect this complex behavior on a young, complex fault system. You can also see it on mature, simple faults,” Cattania says. “The key open question now is how often rupture reversals, or ‘boomerang’ earthquakes, occur in nature. Many observational studies so far have used methods that can’t detect back-propagating fronts. Our work motivates actively looking for them, to further advance our understanding of earthquake physics and ultimately mitigate seismic risk.”

Wisconsin’s S.B. 130 / A.B. 105 is a spectacularly bad idea.

It’s an age-verification bill that effectively bans VPN access to certain websites for Wisconsinites and censors lawful speech. We wrote about it last November in our blog “Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They're Doing,” but since then, the bill has passed the State Assembly and is scheduled for a vote in the State Senate tomorrow.

In light of this, EFF sent a letter to the entire Wisconsin Legislature urging lawmakers to reject this dangerous bill.

You can read the full letter here.

The short version? This bill both requires invasive age verification for websites that host content lawmakers might deem “sexual” and requires that those sites block any user that connects via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPNs are a basic cybersecurity tool used by businesses, universities, journalists, veterans, abuse survivors, and ordinary people who simply don’t want to broadcast their location to every website they visit.

As we lay out in the letter, Wisconsin’s mandate is technically unworkable. Websites cannot reliably determine whether a VPN user is in Wisconsin, a different state, or a different country. So, to avoid liability, websites are faced with an unfortunate choice: either resort to over-blocking IP addresses commonly associated with commercial VPNs, block all Wisconsin users’ access, or mandate nationwide restrictions just to avoid liability. 

The bill also creates a privacy nightmare. It pushes websites to collect sensitive personal data (e.g. government IDs, financial information, biometric identifiers) just to access lawful speech. At the same time, it broadens the definition of material deemed “harmful to minors” far beyond the narrow categories courts have historically allowed states to regulate. The definition goes far beyond the narrow categories historically recognized by courts (namely, explicit adult sexual materials) and instead sweeps in material that merely describes sex or depicts human anatomy. This approach invites over-censorship, chills lawful speech, and exposes websites to vague and unpredictable enforcement. That combination—mass data collection plus vague, expansive speech restrictions—is a recipe for over-censorship, data breaches, and constitutional overreach.

If you live in Wisconsin, now is the time for you to contact your State Senator and urge them to vote NO on S.B. 130 / A.B. 105. Tell them protecting young people online should not mean undermining cybersecurity, chilling lawful speech, and forcing residents to hand over their IDs just to browse the internet.

As we said last time: Our privacy matters. VPNs matter. And politicians who can't tell the difference between a security tool and a "loophole" shouldn't be writing laws about the internet.

(This appeared as an op-ed published February 12, 2026 in the San Jose Spotlight, written by Huy Tran (SIREN), Jeffrey Wang (CAIR-SFBA), and Jennifer Pinsof.)

As ICE and other federal agencies continue their assault on civil liberties, local leaders are stepping up to protect their communities. This includes pushing back against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which are tools of mass surveillance that can be weaponized against immigrants, political dissidents and other targets.

In recent weeks, Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, Santa Cruz, East Palo Alto and Santa Clara County have begun reconsidering their ALPR programs. San Jose should join them. This dangerous technology poses an unacceptable risk to the safety of immigrants and other vulnerable populations.

ALPRs are marketed to promote public safety. But their utility is debatable and they come with significant drawbacks. They don’t just track “criminals.” They track everyone, all the time. Your vehicle’s movements can reveal where you work, worship and obtain medical care. ALPR vendors like Flock Safety put the location information of millions of drivers into databases, allowing anyone with access to instantly reconstruct the public’s movements.

But “anyone with access” is far broader than just local police. Some California law enforcement agencies have used ALPR networks to run searches related to immigration enforcement. In other situations, purported issues with the system’s software have enabled federal agencies to directly access California ALPR data. This is despite the promises of ALPR vendors and clear legal prohibitions.

Communities are saying enough is enough. Just last week, police in Mountain View decided to turn off all of the city’s Flock cameras, following revelations that federal and other unauthorized agencies had accessed their network. The cameras will remain inactive until the City Council provides further direction.

Other localities have shut off the cameras for good. In January, Los Altos Hills terminated its contract with Flock following concerns about ICE. Santa Cruz severed relations with Flock, citing rising tensions with ICE. Most recently, East Palo Alto and Santa Clara County are reconsidering whether to continue their relationships with Flock, given heightened concern for the safety of immigrant communities.

California law prohibits local police from disclosing ALPR data to out-of-state or federal agencies. But at least 75 California police agencies were sharing these records out-of-state as recently as 2023. Just last year, San Francisco police allowed access to out-of-state agencies and 19 searches were related to ICE.

Even without direct access, ICE can exploit local ALPR systems. One investigation found more than 4,000 cases where police had made searches on behalf of federal law enforcement, including for immigration investigations.

Increasing the risk is that law enforcement routinely searches these networks without first obtaining a warrant. In San Jose, police aren’t required to have any suspicion of wrongdoing before searching ALPR databases, which contain a year’s worth of data representing hundreds of millions of records. In a little over a year, San Jose police logged more than 261,000 ALPR searches, or nearly 700 searches a day, all without a warrant.

Two nonprofit organizations, SIREN and CAIR California, represented by Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California, are currently suing to stop San Jose’s warrantless searches of ALPR data. But this is only the first step. A better solution is to simply turn these cameras off.

San Jose cannot afford delay. Each day these cameras remain active, they collect sensitive location data that can be misused to target immigrant families and violate fundamental freedoms. It is a risk materializing across California. City leaders must act now to shut down ALPR systems and make clear that public safety will not come at the expense of privacy, human dignity or community trust.

Related Cases: SIREN and CAIR-CA v. San Jose

Report from EFF, Center for Just Journalism, and IPVM Helps Cut Through Sales Hype

SAN FRANCISCO — A new report released today offers journalists tips on cutting through the sales hype about police surveillance technology and report accurately on costs, benefits, privacy, and accountability as these invasive and often ineffective tools come to communities across the nation. 

The “Selling Safety” report is a joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Just Journalism (CJJ), and IPVM. 

Police technology is often sold as a silver bullet: a way to modernize departments, make communities safer, and eliminate human bias from policing with algorithmic objectivity. Behind the slick marketing is a sprawling, under-scrutinized industry that relies on manufacturing the appearance of effectiveness, not measuring it. The cost of blindly deferring to advertising can be high in tax dollars, privacy, and civil liberties. 

“Selling Safety” helps journalists see through the spin. It breaks down how policing technology companies market their tools, and how those sales claims — which are often misleading — get recycled into media coverage. It offers tools for asking better questions, understanding incentives, and finding local accountability stories. 

“The industry that provides technology to law enforcement is one of the most unregulated, unexamined, and consequential in the United States,” said EFF Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Guariglia. “Most Americans would rightfully be horrified to know how many decisions about policing are made: not by public employees, but by multi-billion-dollar surveillance tech companies who have an insatiable profit motive to market their technology as the silver bullet that will stop crime. Lawmakers often are too eager to seem ‘tough on crime’ and journalists too often see an easy story in publishing law enforcement press releases about new technology. This report offers a glimpse into how the police-tech sausage gets made so reporters and lawmakers can recognize the tactics of glossy marketing pitches, manufactured effectiveness numbers, and chumminess between companies and police.” 

“Surveillance and other police technologies are spreading faster than public understanding or oversight, leaving journalists to do critical accountability work in real time. We hope this report helps make that work easier,” said Hannah Riley Fernandez, CJJ’s Director of Programming. 

"The surveillance technology industry has a documented pattern of making unsubstantiated claims about technology,” said Conor Healy, IPVM's Director of Government Research. “Marketing is not a substitute for evidence. Journalists who go beyond press releases to critically examine vendor claims will often find solutions are not as magical as they may seem. In doing so, they perform essential accountability work that protects both taxpayer dollars and civil liberties." 

EFF also maintains resources for understanding various police technologies and mapping those technologies in communities across the United States. 

For the “Selling Safety” report:  https://www.eff.org/document/selling-safety-journalists-guide-covering-police-technology

For EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance hub: https://sls.eff.org/ 

For EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance: https://www.atlasofsurveillance.org/ 

Contact:  BerylLiptonSenior Investigative Researcherberyl@eff.org

Seven MIT researchers are among the 130 new members and 28 international members recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for 2026. Twelve additional MIT alumni were also elected as new members.

One of the highest professional distinctions for engineers, membership in the NAE is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education,” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

The seven MIT electees this year include:

Moungi Gabriel Bawendi, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, was honored for the synthesis and characterization of semiconductor quantum dots and their applications in displays, photovoltaics, and biology.

Charles Harvey, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was honored for contributions to hydrogeology regarding groundwater arsenic contamination, transport, and consequences.

Piotr Indyk, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, was honored for contributions to approximate nearest neighbor search, streaming, and sketching algorithms for massive data processing.

John Henry Lienhard, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was honored for advances and technological innovations in desalination.

Ram Sasisekharan, the Alfred H. Caspary Professor of Biological Physics and Physics in the Department of Biological Engineering, was honored for discovering the U.S. heparin contaminant in 2008 and creating clinical antibodies for Zika, dengue, SARS-CoV-2, and other diseases.

Frances Ross, the TDK Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was honored for ultra-high vacuum and liquid-cell transmission electron microscopies and their worldwide adoptions for materials research and semiconductor technology development.

Zoltán Sandor Spakovszky SM ’99, PhD ’01, the T. Wilson (1953) Professor in Aeronautics in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was honored for contributions, through rigorous discoveries and advancements, in aeroengine aerodynamic and aerostructural stability and acoustics.

“Each of the MIT faculty and alumni elected to the National Academy of Engineering has made extraordinary contributions to their fields through research, education, and innovation,” says Paula T. Hammond, dean of the School of Engineering and Institute Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. "They represent the breadth of excellence we have here at MIT. This honor reflects the impact of their work, and I’m proud to celebrate their achievement and offer my warmest congratulations.”

Twelve additional alumni were elected to the National Academy of Engineering this year. They are: Anne Hammons Aunins PhD ’91; Lars James Blackmore PhD ’07; John-Paul Clarke ’91, SM ’92, SCD ’97; Michael Fardis SM ’77, SM ’78, PhD ’79; David Hays PhD ’98; Stephen Thomas Kent ’76, EE ’78, ENG ’78, PhD ’81; Randal D. Koster SM ’85, SCD ’88; Fred Mannering PhD ’83; Peyman Milanfar SM ’91, EE ’93, ENG ’93, PhD ’93; Amnon Shashua PhD ’93; Michael Paul Thien SCD ’88; and Terry A. Winograd PhD ’70.

Dean of Engineering Paula Hammond ’84 PhD ’93 made a resounding call for the MIT community to “embrace endless hope” and “never stop looking forward,” in a keynote address at the Institute’s annual MLK Celebration on Wednesday, Feb. 11.

“We each have a role to play in contributing to our future, and we each must embrace endless hope and continuously renew our faith in ourselves to accomplish that dream,” Hammond said, to an audience of hundreds at the event.

She added: “Whether it is through caring for those in our community, teaching others, providing inspiration, leadership, or critical support to others in their moment of need, we provide support for one another on our journey … It is that future that will feed the optimism and faith that we need to move forward, to inspire and encourage, and to never stop looking forward.”

The MLK Celebration is an annual tribute to the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., and is always thematically organized around a quotation of King’s. This year, that passage was, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Hammond and multiple other speakers at the event organized their remarks around that idea, while weaving in personal reflections about the importance of community, family, and mentorship.

As Hammond noted, “We can lay the path toward a better, greater time with the steps that we take today even in the face of incredible disappointment, shock and disruption.” She added: “Principles founded in fear, ignorance, or injustice ultimately fail because they do not meet the needs of a growing and prosperous nation and world.”

The event, which took place in MIT’s Walker Memorial (Building 50), featured remarks by students, staff, and campus leaders, as well as musical performances by the recently reconstituted MIT Gospel Choir. (Listen to one of those performances by clicking on the player at the end of this article.)

MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth provided introductory remarks, noting that this year’s event was occurring during “a time when feeling fractured, isolated, and pitted against each other feels exhaustingly routine. A time when it’s easy to feel discouraged.” As such, she added, “the solace we take from [coming together at this event] couldn’t be more relevant now.”

Kornbluth also offered laudatory thoughts about Hammond, a highly accomplished research scientist who has held numerous leadership roles at MIT and elsewhere. Hammond, a chemical engineer, was named dean of the MIT School of Engineering in December. Prior to that, she has served as vice provost for faculty, from 2023 to 2025, and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, from 2015 to 2023. In honor of her accomplishments, Hammond was named an Institute Professor, MIT’s highest faculty honor. A member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Hammond has developed polymers and nanoscale materials with multiple applications, including drug delivery, imaging, and even battery advances.

Hammond was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2024. That year she also received MIT’s Killian Award, for faculty achievement. And she has earned the rare distinction of having been elected to all three national academies — the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences.

“I’ve never met anyone who better represents MIT’s highest values and aspirations than Paula Hammond,” Kornbluth said, citing both Hammond’s record of academic excellence and Institute service.

Among other things, Kornbluth observed, “Paula has been a longtime champion of MIT’s culture of openness to people and ideas from everywhere. In fact, it’s hard to think of anyone more open to sharing what she knows — and more interested in hearing your point of view. And the respect she shows to everyone — no matter their job or background — is an example for us all.”

Michael Ewing ’27, a mechanical engineering major, provided welcoming remarks while introducing the speakers as well as the MLK Celebration planning committee.

Ewing noted that the event remains “extremely and vitally important” to the MIT community, and reflected on the meaning of this year’s motif, for individuals and larger communities.

“Dr. King’s hope constitutes the belief that one can make things better, even when current conditions are poor,” Ewing said. “In the face of adversity, we must remain connected to what’s most important, be grateful for both the challenges and the opportunities, and hold on to the long-term belief that no matter what, no matter what, there’s an opportunity for us to learn, grow, and improve.”

The annual MLK Celebration also highlighted further reflections from students and staff on King’s life and legacy and the value of his work.

“Everyone that has fought for a greater good in this world has left the battle without something that they came with,” said Oluwadara Deru, a senior in mechanical engineering and the featured undergraduate speaker. “But what they gained is invaluable.”

Ekua Beneman, a graduate student in chemistry, offered thoughts relating matters of academic achievement, and helping others in a university setting, to the larger themes of the celebration.

“Hope is not pretending disappointment doesn’t exist,” Beneman said. “Hope is choosing to pass forward what was once given to you. At a place like MIT, infinite hope looks like mentorship. It looks like making space. It looks like sharing knowledge instead of guarding or gatekeeping it. If we truly want to honor Dr. King’s legacy, beyond this beautiful celebration today, we do it by choosing community, mentorship, and hope in action.”

Denzil Streete, associate dean and director of the Office of Graduate Education, related the annual theme to everyday life at the Institute, as well as social life everywhere.

“Hope lies in small, often uncelebrated acts,” Streete said. “Showing up. Being present. Responding with patience. Translating complicated processes into next steps. Making one more call. Sending one more email.”

He concluded: “See your daily work as moral work … Every day, through joy and care, we choose infinite hope, for our students, and for one another.”

Reverend Thea Keith-Lucas, chaplain to the Institute and associate dean in the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life, offered both an invocation and a benediction at the event.

The annual celebration includes the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Awards Recipients, given this year to Melissa Smith PhD ’12, Fred Harris, Carissma McGee, Janine Medrano, and Edwin Marrero.

For all the turbulence in the world, Hammond said toward the conclusion of her address, people can continue to make progress in their own communities, and can be intentional about focusing, in part, on the possibilities of progress ahead.

At MIT, Hammond noted, “The commitment of our faculty, students, and staff to continuously learn, to ask deep questions and to apply our knowledge, our perspectives and our insights to the biggest world problems is something that gives me infinite hope and optimism for the future.”

MIT News · MIT Gospel Choir, MLK Luncheon 2026

Here are three papers describing different side-channel attacks against LLMs.

“Remote Timing Attacks on Efficient Language Model Inference“:

Abstract: Scaling up language models has significantly increased their capabilities. But larger models are slower models, and so there is now an extensive body of work (e.g., speculative sampling or parallel decoding) that improves the (average case) efficiency of language model generation. But these techniques introduce data-dependent timing characteristics. We show it is possible to exploit these timing differences to mount a timing attack. By monitoring the (encrypted) network traffic between a victim user and a remote language model, we can learn information about the content of messages by noting when responses are faster or slower. With complete black-box access, on open source systems we show how it is possible to learn the topic of a user’s conversation (e.g., medical advice vs. coding assistance) with 90%+ precision, and on production systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude we can distinguish between specific messages or infer the user’s language. We further show that an active adversary can leverage a boosting attack to recover PII placed in messages (e.g., phone numbers or credit card numbers) for open source systems. We conclude with potential defenses and directions for future work...

The president's rollback of tailpipe regulations comes as the global marketplace shifts to electric vehicles.

States and feds are doing little to affect data center growth. People in a Virginia county are pushing back but running into big obstacles.

Forty-one senators are accusing EPA of treating the repeal as a “foregone conclusion.”

Thousands of disaster workers remained on the job as Homeland Security funding lapsed Saturday. But states could see FEMA reimbursements stall.

President Donald Trump said the "U.K.’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum."

Several Democrats joined Republicans to vote against the Clear Horizons Act, which was based on the governor's executive order to cut emissions in the fossil-fuel-heavy state.

The state solicitor general cited West Virginia's landmark Supreme Court triumph over an Obama-era climate rule as one reason he expects EPA's endangerment finding repeal to survive legal challenge.

The case was the first to ask an electric utility to pay to help communities respond to climate change.

The EU Emissions Trading System has come under intense pressure from heavy industry for raising energy costs and contributing to plant closures.

The crisis affected everything from restaurants to factories, some of which were forced to halt production.

The decline in China’s emissions, while small, may mark a turning point for the world’s largest polluter.

Key risks that the European Central Bank is monitoring include the financial impacts of extreme weather events on physical assets and supply chains.

In many academic circles, innovation is imagined as a lab-to-market pipeline that travels through patent filings, venture rounds, and coastal research hubs. But a growing movement inside U.S. universities is pushing students toward a different frontier: solving real engineering problems alongside rural communities whose challenges directly shape national food security. 

A compelling example of this shift can be found in the story of Kiyoko “Kik” Hayano, a second-year mechanical engineering student at MIT, and her work through MIT D-Lab with Keo Fish Farms, a commercial aquaculture operation in the Arkansas Delta.

Hayano’s journey — from a small, windswept town in rural Wyoming to MIT’s campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and on to a working Arkansas fish farm — offers a tangible glimpse into how applied engineering, academic partnerships, and on-the-ground innovation can create new models for regenerative agriculture in the United States.

Wyoming childhood and an engineering dream

Hayano grew up in Powell, Wyoming (population ~6,400), a community defined by agriculture, water scarcity, and long distances. Her early interests in gardening with her grandmother and tinkering with irrigation projects through her high school’s agricultural center formed the foundation for a more ambitious goal: studying mechanical engineering at MIT.

That ambition paid off. Shortly after arriving in Cambridge, Hayano connected with MIT D-Lab, a program founded to co-create engineering solutions with communities, rather than for them — especially in regions facing poverty, resource constraints, or climate-related disruptions. For many MIT students, D-Lab is their entry point into field-based development work across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Increasingly, however, the program has expanded its domestic mission to include rural areas of the United States experiencing food, water, and energy insecurity.

MIT D-Lab meets the Arkansas Delta

That domestic shift set the stage for a new joint effort. In 2024, Keo Fish Farms — a commercial aquaculture farm near Keo, Arkansas — contacted D-Lab seeking technical collaboration on a growing water quality challenge. The farm had begun to observe elevated iron levels in its groundwater, leading to fish mortality events during peak summer conditions. The problem was both biological and mechanical: Aquaculture species like hybrid striped bass and triploid grass carp require consistent, clean water inputs, and well systems tapping iron-rich geologic layers were compromising fish health, hatchery performance, and long-term viability.

Kendra Leith, MIT D-Lab associate director for research, saw an opportunity. The Delta region represents a collision of three major realities that matter deeply to both public policy and academic research: high-value protein production, aging or inadequate water infrastructure, and generational rural decline.

For Hayano, the chance to work on an important engineering problem with environmental, agricultural, and economic implications was exactly why she chose mechanical engineering in the first place.

Applied engineering in a living laboratory

When Hayano arrived at Keo Fish Farms, the project was structured as a co-creative engineering engagement — D-Lab’s core model. She documented the existing water intake system, analyzed the well depth relative to geological iron strata, and evaluated filtration options including aeration, sedimentation, and emerging biochar-based media.

The collaboration generated three immediate academic values. First, the team reviewed real constraints, a process known as ground truthing. Constraints in this situation included iron levels that shift seasonally, capital budgets that do not assume infinite funding, and labor cycles tied to harvest seasons. The team then scoped out the technology that might be used to mitigate problem areas. Iron-reduction solutions ranged from drilling deeper wells to incorporating biochar and other regenerative filtration mediums capable of binding contaminants while improving soil and plant health elsewhere on the farm. Finally, they reviewed policy relevance: Water quality in aquaculture sits at the intersection of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) water standards, climate-driven aquifer variability, and domestic protein security — issues central to U.S. food systems.

Leith notes that “the most transformative experiences happen when students and communities learn from one another.” The Keo project, she adds, is an example of how domestic food production systems can act as test beds for innovation that previously would have been deployed exclusively abroad.

Regenerative agriculture as a national opportunity

While Keo Fish Farms played a supporting role in the narrative, the project highlighted a broader challenge and opportunity: Can U.S. aquaculture transition toward regenerative agriculture principles?

Regenerative agriculture — long associated with row crops, grazing systems, and soil carbon — rarely includes aquaculture in the national conversation. Yet aquaculture sits at the nexus of water chemistry, nutrient cycling, renewable energy integration, biochar and filtration research, protein production, and greenhouse gas mitigation.

Hayano’s work helped illuminate that regenerative aquaculture will likely depend on regenerative water systems, where filtration, biochar, solar energy, and nutrient reuse form a closed-loop infrastructure, rather than a linear extract–use–discharge model.

D-Lab’s domestic projects increasingly intersect with this space, creating pathways for MIT students and faculty to collaborate with USDA, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), and National Science Foundation (NSF) priorities around rural innovation, renewable energy, and water systems engineering.

The role of industry partners: less spotlight, more signal

Keo Fish Farms’ involvement served as a platform — not a spotlight — for the engineering and policy implications emerging from the project. The farm provided three critical ingredients academic institutions often lack: a real commercial engineering problem with economic consequences, a living laboratory for field research and prototyping, and a pathway for future regenerative adoption at scale.

The farm’s leadership has stated that its long-term goal is to become a first-in-class demonstration site for regenerative aquaculture in the United States, combining advanced iron and sediment filtration, biochar production from local rice hull waste streams, renewable solar energy systems, water recycling and nutrient recovery, reduced chemical inputs, and habitat and biodiversity considerations.

To be sure, the D-Lab collaboration did not solve that entire puzzle, but it created the blueprint for a pathway, showing how academic partnerships can accelerate regenerative transitions in rural U.S. agriculture and aquaculture systems.

Lessons for universities and policymakers

For universities, the Keo–MIT D-Lab partnership offers a replicable model for experiential learning for STEM students, field-based regenerative research, technology validation in live agricultural systems, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. And for federal and state policymakers, it illustrates how rural communities can serve as innovation sites, why water infrastructure modernization matters to food security, how regenerative agriculture can expand beyond soil and grazing, and why public-private-academic partnerships deserve new funding pathways.

All of this aligns with emerging priorities at the USDA, DoE, NSF, and EPA around sustainability, climate resilience, and domestic protein systems.

For Hayano, the experience reinforced that engineering careers can be rooted not only in Silicon Valley labs or aerospace firms, but also in overlooked rural systems that feed the country. 

“I’m really grateful for the experience,” she reflected after the project. “It opened my eyes to how engineering can support sustainable food systems and rural communities.”

The sentiment echoes a broader trend among students seeking careers at the intersection of technology, environment, and public good. Whether Hayano returns to the Arkansas Delta or not, her path captures something deeply relevant to America’s innovation story: talent emerging from rural places, innovating at world-class institutions, and returning engineering capacity back into the country’s agricultural heartland.

It is, in many ways, a modern form of the American dream — one grounded not in abstraction, but in water, food, soil, and the systems that will define our next century.