Category: Uncategorized

Two MIT professors, an alumnus, and a former postdoc are among the winners of 2024’s Nobel Prizes. From left: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Victor Ambros, and Gary RuvkunADAM GLANZMAN (ACEMOGLU); MICHELLE FIORENZA (JOHNSON); COURTESY OF UMASS CHAN MEDICAL SCHOOL (AMBROS); COURTESY OF THE HARVARD GAZETTE (RUVKUN) Professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, PhD ’89, shared… Read more

Despite increasing evidence that water flowed on Mars billions of years ago, scientists have been mystified by what happened to the thick, carbon dioxide–rich atmosphere that must have once kept that water from freezing.  Now two MIT geologists think they know. Geology professor Oliver Jagoutz and Joshua Murray, PhD ’24, propose that much of this… Read more

“We meet in the name of Osiris.”  With these words, solemnly intoned, members of the MIT Osiris Society began their clandestine meetings for nearly 70 years. Created in 1903 as a “senior society” and modeled on both the fraternities of Cornell and the mythology of ancient Egypt, Osiris gave MIT’s senior leadership an opportunity to… Read more

Brackish groundwater is a major potential source of drinking water in underserved areas of the world, but desalinating it affordably is a challenge. A new system developed by mechanical engineering professor Amos Winter, Jon Bessette, SM ’22, and staff engineer Shane Pratt manages to do the job entirely on solar energy, with no need for… Read more

“I’m moving to Boston in three weeks!” At my high school graduation, I had just learned I’d been accepted into the Interphase EDGE program, an incredible opportunity to acclimate to life at MIT before the 2022 school year began. I was glad to have that chance, since I faced a big change from life at… Read more

What if construction materials could be put together, taken apart, and reused as easily as Lego bricks? That’s the vision a team of MIT engineers hopes to realize with a new kind of masonry it’s developing from recycled glass. Using a custom 3D-printing technology provided by the MIT spinoff Evenline, the team has made strong,… Read more

When I last wrote to you in this magazine, I told you a bit about the MIT Collaboratives, an effort to spark new ideas and modes of inquiry and help the people of MIT solve global problems. Since then, we’ve launched the first collaborative, grounding it in the human-centered fields represented by our School of… Read more

“THE CULT OF THE FOUNDER.” “THE CULT OF THE TECH GENIUS.”  “Beware: Silicon Valley’s cultists want to turn you into a disruptive deviant.” “Tech’s cult of the founder bounces back.” “Silicon Valley’s Strange, Apocalyptic Cults.” “How the cult of personality and tech-bro culture is killing technology.” “Company or cult?” “Is your corporate culture cultish?” “The… Read more

We need a strategy to deal with a hydra.  It’s Sunday, January 14, 2024, more than 50 hours since the annual MIT Mystery Hunt kicked off at noon on Friday, and Setec Astronomy is one of more than 200 teams racing to solve hundreds of puzzles over three days. The 60-some members of Setec, many… Read more

The widespread use of large-scale language models (LLMs) in safety-critical areas has brought forward a crucial challenge: how to ensure their adherence to clear ethical and safety guidelines. Existing alignment techniques, such as supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), have limitations. Models can still produce harmful content when manipulated, refuse legitimate… Read more