In the vision disorder amblyopia (or “lazy eye”), impaired vision in one eye early in life causes neural connections in the brain’s visual system to shift toward supporting the other eye, leaving the amblyopic eye less capable even if the original impairment is corrected. Current interventions don’t work after infancy and early childhood, when the…

MIT researchers have developed a new method for designing 3D structures that can spring up from a flat sheet of interconnected tiles with a single pull of a string. The technique could be used to make foldable bike helmets and medical devices, emergency shelters and field hospitals for disaster zones, and much more. Mina Konaković…

Nearly everyone has experienced it—after a night of poor sleep, your brain might seem foggy, and your mind drifts off when you should be paying attention. A new MIT study reveals what happens biologically as these momentary lapses occur: Your brain is performing essential maintenance that it usually takes care of while you sleep.  During…

As MIT navigates a difficult and constantly changing higher education landscape, I believe our best response is not easy but simple: Keep doing our very best work. The presidential initiatives we’ve launched since fall 2024 are a vital part of our strategy to advance excellence within and across high-impact fields, from health care, climate, and…

Jaden Chizuruoke May ’29 worked with teammates Rihanna Arouna ’29 and Marian Akinsoji ’29 to design the chemically powered model car whose framework he is building in this scene from the Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space, where students have a chance to work safely and independently with biological systems. The assignment to build the car—and the layered…

Ever since nuclear fusion was discovered in the 1930s, scientists have wondered if we could somehow replicate and harness the phenomenon behind starlight—the smashing together of hydrogen atoms to form helium and a stupendous amount of clean energy. Fusing hydrogen would yield 200 million times more energy than simply burning it. Unlike nuclear fission, which…

Few people, if any, contemplate stars—celestial or cinematic—the way Aomawa Shields does.  An astronomer and astrobiologist, Shields explores the potential habitability of planets beyond our solar system. But she is also a classically trained actor—and that’s helped shape her professional trajectory in unexpected ways.  Today, Shields is an associate professor in the Department of Physics…

Water shortages in Southern California made an indelible impression on Evelyn Wang ’00 when she was growing up in Los Angeles. “I was quite young, perhaps in first grade,” she says. “But I remember we weren’t allowed to turn our sprinklers on. And everyone in the neighborhood was given disinfectant tablets for the toilet and…

Concrete already builds our world, and an MIT-invented variant known as electron-­conducting carbon concrete (ec3, pronounced “e c cubed”) holds out the possibility of helping power it, too. Now that vision is one step closer.  Made by combining cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black, and electrolytes, ec3 creates a conductive “nanonetwork” that could enable walls, sidewalks,…

Earthquakes are driven by energy stored up in rocks over millennia—energy that, once released, we perceive mainly in the form of the ground’s shaking. But a quake also generates a flash of heat and fractures and damages underground rocks. And exactly how much energy goes into each of these three processes is exceedingly difficult to…