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Founded in 1861, MIT has a proud history of influencing the world through technological leadership and research innovation. MIT is one of the world’s preeminent research universities: renowned for rigorous academic programs in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship; cutting-edge research; a diverse campus community; and a longstanding commitment to working with the public and private sectors to bring new knowledge to bear on the world’s complex challenges.

Areg Danagoulian, a professor in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, was thinking about a gap in glob...
09/01/2026

Areg Danagoulian, a professor in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, was thinking about a gap in global security: The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear weapons in space, but there's currently no way to verify that satellites don't carry them. A nuclear detonation in low-Earth orbit would release trillions of highly energetic electrons, destroying many satellites and disrupting telecommunications, GPS, and space-based internet worldwide.

So Danagoulian proposed a way to detect them. His concept uses a satellite-based sensor system with neutron detectors that could orbit near a suspect satellite and identify neutrons generated when high-energy protons collide with radioactive material. His calculations show the system could detect a nuclear weapon with 99 percent accuracy from 4,000 meters away in about a week, or in just one hour from 1,000 meters.

"You can fake intelligence," Danagoulian says, "but you can't fake physics." Published in Nature, the feasibility study aims to encourage further research and development. While many practical considerations remain, Danagoulian believes scientific verification could encourage nonproliferation and strengthen international trust.

https://news.mit.edu/2026/mit-researcher-proposes-way-to-detect-nuclear-weapons-in-space-0708

08/31/2026

Professor Xuanhe Zhao in MIT Mechanical Engineering identified a persistent problem: hydrogels—the squishy, water-based materials in bandages and medical sensors—trap moisture. Wear them too long, and the skin irritates. "Water and oxygen are both essential for life," Zhao says. "Now that we've added air to hydrogels, people can find broad applications."

The breakthrough came from mixing hydrogel with tiny silica aerogel particles that naturally repel water. Through viscoelastic phase separation, the particles formed thin, interconnected tunnels—what Zhao calls "air-permeable highways"—allowing air to flow through while maintaining the gel's softness and stretch.

In experiments, volunteers wore wireless heart monitors attached to the new hydrogel for 10 days while exercising. No skin irritation. Clear signals throughout. The work, published in Nature, could enable longer-lasting bandages, implants, contact lenses, and wearable health monitors.

https://news.mit.edu/2026/mit-engineers-whip-up-more-breathable-hydrogel-0708

Zane Schemmer, a 2024 MIT Morningside Academy for Design Fellow and PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environme...
08/30/2026

Zane Schemmer, a 2024 MIT Morningside Academy for Design Fellow and PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), identified a persistent problem: many construction companies avoid using topology optimization, even though it can cut building material by 90 percent. Researchers say the designs it creates are too complex for contractors to build.

So Schemmer set out to bridge that gap—between what's theoretically optimal and what's truly buildable. Working with his advisor, Josephine Carstensen, associate professor in CEE, they created a framework that lets topology optimization add real-world constraints: material complexity limits, rules specific to wood or steel, and practical connection points. Their findings were recently published in Automation in Construction.

"One of the most tangible things we can do is work at the design stage," Schemmer says. "That's a fundamental step we can control."

Construction accounts for 7 percent of global carbon emissions. This work aims to move topology optimization from research labs toward real buildings.

📸: Zane Schemmer; credit: Adelaide Zollinger

https://news.mit.edu/2026/computer-model-could-enable-less-material-bridges-buildings-0624

In a new Science Translational Medicine study by a team including MIT-Novo Nordisk Postdoc Seyed Majed Modaresi and Prof...
08/29/2026

In a new Science Translational Medicine study by a team including MIT-Novo Nordisk Postdoc Seyed Majed Modaresi and Professor James Collins from the MIT Department of Biological Engineering, researchers used deep learning to identify promising new compounds against drug-resistant gonorrhea.

Gonorrhea is one of the most commonly reported sexually transmitted infections, with hundreds of thousands of cases reported each year in the U.S. alone. Its growing resistance to available antibiotics makes the search for new treatments increasingly urgent.

The team trained a machine learning model to evaluate millions of chemical compounds, ultimately identifying candidates with activity against multidrug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea. The work shows how AI-enabled discovery can help expand the antibiotic pipeline and accelerate progress against one of today’s most persistent infectious disease challenges.

https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/machine-learning-how-to-overcome-antibiotic-resistant-gonorrhea/

Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of MIT Mechanical Engineering, identified a problem: existing ingestible tempe...
08/28/2026

Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of MIT Mechanical Engineering, identified a problem: existing ingestible temperature sensors are the size of a multivitamin—difficult to swallow and potentially risky. So, he redesigned one from scratch. The result is a blueberry-shaped sensor, just 6 millimeters in diameter, that sits in your GI tract and continuously transmits accurate core body temperature readings.

The breakthrough came from rethinking every component: a customized silicon chip running on just 10 nanowatts, a coin-cell battery, and a communication strategy that outsources power to an external antenna. "A sensor like this gives us the ability to monitor infections and identify them early," Traverso says. "That's very relevant, particularly for at-risk populations like people who are immunosuppressed from chemotherapy treatments."

The applications extend beyond hospitals—monitoring fevers in children, tracking ovulation for fertility, or managing extreme temperatures in athletes and soldiers. The team is working toward clinical trials within the next few years.

https://news.mit.edu/2026/tiny-ingestible-sensor-can-measure-temperature-inside-body-0615

Chris Caplice, a Senior Research Scientist and the Executive Director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, ...
08/27/2026

Chris Caplice, a Senior Research Scientist and the Executive Director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, is a recipient of the 2026 School of Engineering Distinguished Educator Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to undergraduate and/or graduate education by members of its faculty and teaching staff.

Caplice is responsible for the planning and management of the research, education, and corporate outreach programs for CTL. He created and currently serves as Director of the MITx MicroMasters Program in Supply Chain Management, which was the first MicroMasters credential ever offered. He is also the founder of the MIT FreightLab, a research initiative that focuses on improving the way freight transportation is designed, procured, and managed.

“I believe that CTL should win this award as a center, rather than me as an individual,” Caplice says. “Professor Yossi Sheffi, the Director for over 30 years, has created an atmosphere and culture at CTL that encourages and rewards not only research but also the dissemination of these ideas and concepts to students, executives, and practitioners. Every one of the more than two dozen research scientists at CTL is actively involved in not only their specific research, but also teaching to graduate students and practitioners alike. CTL is an incredibly unique place where teaching and disseminating new and innovative concepts and impacting actual practice are as important as discovering them in the first place.”

📸: Conor McArdle

https://engineering.mit.edu/news/chris-caplice-receives-2026-school-of-engineering-distinguished-educator-award

MIT researchers led by Vivienne Sze, a professor in the MIT EECS Department, developed a chip called Gleanmer that const...
08/27/2026

MIT researchers led by Vivienne Sze, a professor in the MIT EECS Department, developed a chip called Gleanmer that constructs detailed 3D maps using only about 6 milliwatts of power—roughly what a single LED uses.

That changes what's possible. A tiny drone could zip through an industrial HVAC system, checking for gas leaks. AR glasses could run all day without draining the battery. Any battery-limited device can understand its environment in real time—something that previously required power-hungry systems and massive memory.

The breakthrough came from rethinking how robots represent space. Instead of storing rigid 3D pixels, the system uses flexible ellipsoid shapes that adapt to curved objects more efficiently. Then the team designed specialized hardware to accelerate that algorithm, keeping data moving through fast on-chip memory instead of power-hungry storage.

"Real-time 3D mapping has been the missing piece for small autonomous systems," says Sertac Karaman, a professor in MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics and co-author. "Gleanmer makes that possible for the first time in a chip you can hold between your fingers."

https://news.mit.edu/2026/new-chip-could-help-tiny-robots-traverse-complex-environments-0623

Lydia Bourouiba, the Japan Steel Industry Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department...
08/26/2026

Lydia Bourouiba, the Japan Steel Industry Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), received the 2026 MathWorks Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship (FRIF). The MIT FRIFs were established to recognize midcareer faculty members for outstanding research contributions and leadership in their fields.

Bourouiba directs The Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory and co-leads the Fluids and Health Network. Her research interests span a broad range of fundamental to applied curiosity-driven questions in fluid physics/dynamics, biophysics, out-of-equilibrium dynamics, and mathematical modeling.

“Discretionary funding such as the MathWorks Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship allows us to explore truly novel and transformative ideas that do not yet have a home through traditional funding mechanisms,” Bourouiba says. “For the out-of-the-box, high-risk, high-reward work that has characterized our team’s research agenda, discretionary funding is of the utmost importance and fundamentally enabling. It can make or break our ability to pursue groundbreaking, risky, and unconventional ideas that most of the time end up being the most transformative and course-altering for our scientific discoveries and translation overall.”

📸: Conor McArdle

https://engineering.mit.edu/news/lydia-bourouiba-receives-2026-mathworks-faculty-research-innovation-fellowship

What if you could speak words to an AI-driven robot that could then turn those words into a physical object? That’s the ...
08/26/2026

What if you could speak words to an AI-driven robot that could then turn those words into a physical object? That’s the exact question driving the research of Alexander Htet Kyaw, a PhD student in the MIT EECS Department.

That question led Kyaw’s interdepartmental research team at MIT to develop Speech to Reality. Say "I need a chair," and within five minutes, one materializes in front of you. For Kyaw and his team, the vision is clear: democratizing manufacturing means putting the power to create in anyone's hands.

"By combining natural language with modular assembly, we're enabling anyone to speak objects into existence," says Kyaw. "The idea is to make design and fabrication fast, accessible, and sustainable."

The project has been named one of Fast Company's World Changing Ideas for 2026.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91546670/academic-excellence-world-changing-ideas-2026

Injecting carbon dioxide into cement is a growing commercial strategy to store CO₂ and reduce emissions. But until now, ...
08/25/2026

Injecting carbon dioxide into cement is a growing commercial strategy to store CO₂ and reduce emissions. But until now, no one had directly observed what actually happens chemically when CO₂ meets fresh cement paste.

Using real-time Raman spectroscopy, MIT researchers, led by Associate Professor Admir Masic in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, captured the fleeting chemical reactions for the first time. They discovered a three-stage process where CO₂ temporarily suppresses the paste's alkalinity, creating a distributed silica gel network that ultimately produces a stronger, more uniform microstructure.

The result: CO₂-injected cement achieved 13 percent higher compressive strength at 24 hours compared to conventional mixes.

"Pointing a laser at CO₂-injected cement paste as it hardens allows us to visualize things that haven't been seen before," says Masic. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society, reveal the chemistry behind a technology already attracting commercial interest—and could help optimize it further.

https://news.mit.edu/2026/carbon-dioxide-rewires-how-cement-sets-0611

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