Nanostructures are a stunning array of intricate patterns that are imperceptible to the human eye, yet they help power modern life. They are the building blocks of microchip transistors, etched onto grating substrates of space-based X-ray telescopes, and drive innovations in medicine, sustainability, and quantum computing.

Since the 1970s, Henry “Hank” Smith, MIT professor emeritus of electrical engineering, has been a leading force in this field. He pioneered the use of proximity X-ray lithography, proving that X-rays’ short optical wavelength could produce high-resolution patterns at the nanometer scale. Smith also made significant advancements in phase-shifting masks (PSMs), a technique that disrupts light waves to enhance contrast. His design of attenuated PSMs, which he co-created with graduate students Mark Schattenburg PhD ʼ84 and Erik H. Anderson ʼ81, SM ʼ84, PhD ʼ88, is still used today in the semiconductor industry.

In recognition of these contributions, as well as highly influential achievements in liquid-immersion lithography, achromatic-interference lithography, and zone-plate array lithography, Smith recently received the 2025 SPIE Frits Zernike Award for Microlithography. Given by the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), the accolade recognizes scientists for their outstanding accomplishments in microlithographic technology.

“The Zernike Award is an impressive honor that aptly recognizes Hank’s pioneering contributions,” says Karl Berggren, MIT’s Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor in Electrical Engineering and faculty head of electrical engineering. “Whether it was in the classroom, at a research conference, or in the lab, Hank approached his work with a high level of scientific rigor that helped make him decades ahead of industry practices.”

Now 88 years old, Smith has garnered many other honors. He was also awarded the SPIE BACUS Prize, named a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, IEEE, the National Academy of Inventors, and the International Society for Nanomanufacturing.

Jump-starting the nano frontier

From an early age, Smith was fascinated by the world around him. He took apart clocks to see how they worked, explored the outdoors, and even observed the movement of water. After graduating from high school in New Jersey, Smith majored in physics at College of the Holy Cross. From there, he pursued his doctorate at Boston College and served three years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

It was his job at MIT Lincoln Laboratory that ultimately changed Smith’s career trajectory. There, he met visitors from MIT and Harvard University who shared their big ideas for electronic and surface acoustic wave devices but were stymied by the physical limitations of fabrication. Yet, few were inclined to tackle this challenge.

“The job of making things was usually brushed off the table with, ‘oh well, we’ll get some technicians to do that,’” Smith said in his oral history for the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. “And the intellectual content of fabrication technology was not appreciated by people who had been ‘traditionally educated,’ I guess.”

More interested in solving problems than maintaining academic rank, Smith set out to understand the science of fabrication. His breakthrough in X-ray lithography signaled to the world the potential and possibilities of working on the nanometer scale, says Schattenburg, who is a senior research scientist at MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

“His early work proved to people at MIT and researchers across the country that nanofabrication had some merit,” Schattenburg says. “By showing what was possible, Hank really jump-started the nano frontier.”

Cracking open lithography’s black box

By 1980, Smith left Lincoln Lab for MIT’s main campus and continued to push forward new ideas in his NanoStructures Laboratory (NSL), formerly the Submicron Structures Laboratory. NSL served as both a research lab and a service shop that provided optical gratings, which are pieces of glass engraved with sub-micron periodic patterns, to the MIT community and outside scientists. It was a busy time for the lab; NSL attracted graduate students and international visitors. Still, Smith and his staff ensured that anyone visiting NSL would also receive a primer on nanotechnology.

“Hank never wanted anything we produced to be treated as a black box,” says Mark Mondol, MIT.nano e-beam lithography domain expert who spent 23 years working with Smith in NSL. “Hank was always very keen on people understanding our work and how it happens, and he was the perfect person to explain it because he talked in very clear and basic terms.”

The physical NSL space in MIT Building 39 shuttered in 2023, a decade after Smith became an emeritus faculty member. NSL’s knowledgeable staff and unique capabilities transferred to MIT.nano, which now serves as MIT’s central hub for supporting nanoscience and nanotechnology advancements. Unstoppable, Smith continues to contribute his wisdom to the ever-expanding nano community by giving talks at the NSL Community Meetings at MIT.nano focused on lithography, nanofabrication, and their future. 

Smith’s career is far from complete. Through his startup LumArray, Smith continues to push the boundaries of knowledge. He recently devised a maskless lithography method, known as X-ray Maskless Lithography (XML), that has the potential to lower manufacturing costs of microchips and thwart the sale of counterfeit microchips.

Dimitri Antoniadis, MIT professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science, is Smith’s longtime collaborator and friend. According to him, Smith’s commitment to research is practically unheard-of.

“Once professors reach emeritus status, we usually inspire and supervise research,” Antoniadis says. “It’s very rare for retired professors to do all the work themselves, but he loves it.”

Enduring influence

Smith’s legacy extends far beyond the groundbreaking tools and techniques he pioneered, say his friends, colleagues, and former students. His relentless curiosity and commitment to his graduate students helped propel his field forward.

He earned a reputation for sitting in the front row at research conferences, ready to ask the first question. Fellow researchers sometimes dreaded seeing him there.

“Hank kept us honest,” Berggren says. “Scientists and engineers knew that they couldn’t make a claim that was a little too strong, or use data that didn’t support the hypothesis, because Hank would hold them accountable.”

Smith never saw himself as playing the good cop or bad cop — he was simply a curious learner unafraid to look foolish.

“There are famous people, Nobel Prize winners, that will sit through research presentations and not have a clue as to what’s going on,” Smith says. “That is an utter waste of time. If I don’t understand something, I’m going to ask a question.”

As an advisor, Smith held his graduate students to high standards. If they came unprepared or lacked understanding of their research, he would challenge them with tough, unrelenting questions. Yet, he was also their biggest advocate, helping students such as Lisa Su SB/SM ʼ91, PhD ʼ94, who is now the chair and chief executive officer of AMD, and Dario Gil PhD ʼ03, who is now the chair of the National Science Board and senior vice president and director of research at IBM, succeed in the lab and beyond.

Research Specialist James Daley has spent nearly three decades at MIT, most of them working with Smith. In that time, he has seen hundreds of advisees graduate and return to offer their thanks. “Hank’s former students are all over the world,” Daley says. “Many are now professors mentoring their own graduate students and bringing with them some of Hank’s style. They are his greatest legacy.”

On May 6, MIT AgeLab’s Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) Consortium, part of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, celebrated 10 years of its global academic-industry collaboration. AVT was founded with the aim of developing new data that contribute to automotive manufacturers, suppliers, and insurers’ real-world understanding of how drivers use and respond to increasingly sophisticated vehicle technologies, such as assistive and automated driving, while accelerating the applied insight needed to advance design and development. The celebration event brought together stakeholders from across the industry for a set of keynote addresses and panel discussions on critical topics significant to the industry and its future, including artificial intelligence, automotive technology, collision repair, consumer behavior, sustainability, vehicle safety policy, and global competitiveness.

Bryan Reimer, founder and co-director of the AVT Consortium, opened the event by remarking that over the decade AVT has collected hundreds of terabytes of data, presented and discussed research with its over 25 member organizations, supported members’ strategic and policy initiatives, published select outcomes, and built AVT into a global influencer with tremendous impact in the automotive industry. He noted that current opportunities and challenges for the industry include distracted driving, a lack of consumer trust and concerns around transparency in assistive and automated driving features, and high consumer expectations for vehicle technology, safety, and affordability. How will industry respond? Major players in attendance weighed in.

In a powerful exchange on vehicle safety regulation, John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and Mark Rosekind, former chief safety innovation officer of Zoox, former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, challenged industry and government to adopt a more strategic, data-driven, and collaborative approach to safety. They asserted that regulation must evolve alongside innovation, not lag behind it by decades. Appealing to the automakers in attendance, Bozzella cited the success of voluntary commitments on automatic emergency braking as a model for future progress. “That’s a way to do something important and impactful ahead of regulation.” They advocated for shared data platforms, anonymous reporting, and a common regulatory vision that sets safety baselines while allowing room for experimentation. The 40,000 annual road fatalities demand urgency — what’s needed is a move away from tactical fixes and toward a systemic safety strategy. “Safety delayed is safety denied,” Rosekind stated. “Tell me how you’re going to improve safety. Let’s be explicit.”

Drawing inspiration from aviation’s exemplary safety record, Kathy Abbott, chief scientific and technical advisor for the Federal Aviation Administration, pointed to a culture of rigorous regulation, continuous improvement, and cross-sectoral data sharing. Aviation’s model, built on highly trained personnel and strict predictability standards, contrasts sharply with the fragmented approach in the automotive industry. The keynote emphasized that a foundation of safety culture — one that recognizes that technological ability alone isn’t justification for deployment — must guide the auto industry forward. Just as aviation doesn’t equate absence of failure with success, vehicle safety must be measured holistically and proactively.

With assistive and automated driving top of mind in the industry, Pete Bigelow of Automotive News offered a pragmatic diagnosis. With companies like Ford and Volkswagen stepping back from full autonomy projects like Argo AI, the industry is now focused on Level 2 and 3 technologies, which refer to assisted and automated driving, respectively. Tesla, GM, and Mercedes are experimenting with subscription models for driver assistance systems, yet consumer confusion remains high. JD Power reports that many drivers do not grasp the differences between L2 and L2+, or whether these technologies offer safety or convenience features. Safety benefits have yet to manifest in reduced traffic deaths, which have risen by 20 percent since 2020. The recurring challenge: L3 systems demand that human drivers take over during technical difficulties, despite driver disengagement being their primary benefit, potentially worsening outcomes. Bigelow cited a quote from Bryan Reimer as one of the best he’s received in his career: “Level 3 systems are an engineer’s dream and a plaintiff attorney’s next yacht,” highlighting the legal and design complexity of systems that demand handoffs between machine and human.

In terms of the impact of AI on the automotive industry, Mauricio Muñoz, senior research engineer at AI Sweden, underscored that despite AI’s transformative potential, the automotive industry cannot rely on general AI megatrends to solve domain-specific challenges. While landmark achievements like AlphaFold demonstrate AI’s prowess, automotive applications require domain expertise, data sovereignty, and targeted collaboration. Energy constraints, data firewalls, and the high costs of AI infrastructure all pose limitations, making it critical that companies fund purpose-driven research that can reduce costs and improve implementation fidelity. Muñoz warned that while excitement abounds — with some predicting artificial superintelligence by 2028 — real progress demands organizational alignment and a deep understanding of the automotive context, not just computational power.

Turning the focus to consumers, a collision repair panel drawing Richard Billyeald from Thatcham Research, Hami Ebrahimi from Caliber Collision, and Mike Nelson from Nelson Law explored the unintended consequences of vehicle technology advances: spiraling repair costs, labor shortages, and a lack of repairability standards. Panelists warned that even minor repairs for advanced vehicles now require costly and complex sensor recalibrations — compounded by inconsistent manufacturer guidance and no clear consumer alerts when systems are out of calibration. The panel called for greater standardization, consumer education, and repair-friendly design. As insurance premiums climb and more people forgo insurance claims, the lack of coordination between automakers, regulators, and service providers threatens consumer safety and undermines trust. The group warned that until Level 2 systems function reliably and affordably, moving toward Level 3 autonomy is premature and risky.

While the repair panel emphasized today’s urgent challenges, other speakers looked to the future. Honda’s Ryan Harty, for example, highlighted the company’s aggressive push toward sustainability and safety. Honda aims for zero environmental impact and zero traffic fatalities, with plans to be 100 percent electric by 2040 and to lead in energy storage and clean power integration. The company has developed tools to coach young drivers and is investing in charging infrastructure, grid-aware battery usage, and green hydrogen storage. “What consumers buy in the market dictates what the manufacturers make,” Harty noted, underscoring the importance of aligning product strategy with user demand and environmental responsibility. He stressed that manufacturers can only decarbonize as fast as the industry allows, and emphasized the need to shift from cost-based to life-cycle-based product strategies.

Finally, a panel involving Laura Chace of ITS America, Jon Demerly of Qualcomm, Brad Stertz of Audi/VW Group, and Anant Thaker of Aptiv covered the near-, mid-, and long-term future of vehicle technology. Panelists emphasized that consumer expectations, infrastructure investment, and regulatory modernization must evolve together. Despite record bicycle fatality rates and persistent distracted driving, features like school bus detection and stop sign alerts remain underutilized due to skepticism and cost. Panelists stressed that we must design systems for proactive safety rather than reactive response. The slow integration of digital infrastructure — sensors, edge computing, data analytics — stems not only from technical hurdles, but procurement and policy challenges as well. 

Reimer concluded the event by urging industry leaders to re-center the consumer in all conversations — from affordability to maintenance and repair. With the rising costs of ownership, growing gaps in trust in technology, and misalignment between innovation and consumer value, the future of mobility depends on rebuilding trust and reshaping industry economics. He called for global collaboration, greater standardization, and transparent innovation that consumers can understand and afford. He highlighted that global competitiveness and public safety both hang in the balance. As Reimer noted, “success will come through partnerships” — between industry, academia, and government — that work toward shared investment, cultural change, and a collective willingness to prioritize the public good.

Anantha Chandrakasan, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science who has held multiple leadership roles at MIT, has been named the Institute’s new provost, effective July 1.

Chandrakasan has served as the dean of the School of Engineering since 2017 and as MIT’s inaugural chief innovation and strategy officer since 2024. Prior to becoming dean, he headed the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), MIT’s largest academic department, for six years.

“Anantha brings to this post an exceptional record of shaping and leading important innovations for the Institute,” wrote MIT President Sally Kornbluth, in an email announcing the decision to the MIT community today. “I am particularly grateful that we will be able to draw on Anantha’s depth and breadth of experience; his nimbleness, entrepreneurial spirit and boundless energy; his remarkable record in raising funds from outside sources for important ideas; and his profound commitment to MIT’s mission.”

The provost is MIT’s senior academic and budget officer, with overall responsibility for the Institute’s educational programs, as well as for the recruitment, promotion, and tenuring of faculty. With the president and other members of the Institute’s senior leadership team, the provost establishes academic priorities, manages financial planning and research support, and oversees MIT’s international engagements.

“I feel deeply honored to take on the role of provost,” says Chandrakasan, who is also the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Looking ahead, I see myself as a key facilitator, enabling faculty, students, postdocs, and staff to continue making extraordinary contributions to the nation and the world.”

Investing in excellence

Chandrakasan succeeds Cynthia Barnhart, who announced her decision to step down from the role in February. As dean of engineering, Chandrakasan worked with Barnhart closely during her tenure as provost and, before that, chancellor.

“Cindy has been a tremendous mentor,” he says. “She is always very thoughtful and makes sure she hears all the viewpoints, which is something I will strive to do as well. I so admire how deftly she approaches complex problems and supports a variety of perspectives and approaches.”

As MIT’s chief academic officer, Chandrakasan will focus on three overarching priorities: understanding institutional needs and strategic financial planning, attracting and retaining top talent, and supporting cross-cutting research, education, and entrepreneurship programming. On all of these fronts, he plans to seek frequent input from across the Institute.

“Recognizing that each school and other academic units operate within a unique context, I plan to engage deeply with their leaders to understand their challenges and aspirations. This will help me refine and set the priorities for the Office of the Provost,” Chandrakasan says.

He also plans to establish a provost faculty advisory group to hear on an ongoing basis from faculty across the five schools and the college, as well as student/postdoc advisory groups and an external provost advisory council.

“My goal is to continue to facilitate excellence at MIT at all levels,” Chandrakasan says.

He adds: “There is a tremendous opportunity for MIT to be at the center of the innovations in areas where the United States wants to lead. It’s about AI. It’s about semiconductors. It’s about quantum, the biosecurity and biomanufacturing space — but not only that. We need students who can do more than just code or design or build. We really need students who understand the human perspective and human insights. This is why collaborations between STEM fields and the humanities, arts and social sciences, such as through the new MIT Human Insights Collaborative, are so important.”

In her email to the MIT community, Kornbluth also noted that Institute Professor Paula Hammond, currently vice provost for faculty, will take on an expanded portfolio with the new title of executive vice provost, and Deputy Dean of Engineering Maria Yang will serve as interim dean until the new dean is in place.

Advancing the president’s vision

In February 2024, Chandrakasan was appointed at MIT’s first chief innovation and strategy officer, to help develop and implement plans to advance research, education, and innovation in areas that President Kornbluth identified as her top priorities.

Working closely with the president, Chandrakasan oversaw MIT’s launch of several Institute-wide initiatives, including the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC), the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS), the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium (MGAIC, or “magic”), the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM), and multiple energy- and climate-related initiatives including the MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance.

These initiatives bring together MIT faculty, staff, and students from across the Institute, as well as industry partners, supporting bold, ground-breaking research and education to address pressing problems. In launching them, Chandrakasan was responsible for the “full stack” of tasks, from developing the vision to finding funding to implementing the programming — a significant undertaking on top of his other responsibilities.

“People consider me intense, which might be true,” he says, with a chuckle. “The reality is that I’m deeply passionate about the academic mission of MIT to create breakthrough technologies, educate the next generation of leaders, and serve the country and the world.”

New models for collaboration

During his time as dean of engineering, Chandrakasan played a key role in advancing a variety of historic Institute-wide initiatives, including the founding of the MIT Schwarzman College of computing and the development of the MIT Fast Forward plan for addressing climate change. He also served as the inaugural chair of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health and as the co-chair of the academic workstream for MIT’s Task Force 2021. Earlier, he led an Institute-wide working group to guide the development of policies and procedures related to MIT’s 2016 launch of The Engine, an incubator and accelerator for tough tech, and also served on its inaugural board.

He implemented a variety of interdisciplinary programs within the School of Engineering, creating new models for how academia and industry can work together to accelerate the pace of research. This work led to multiple new initiatives, such as the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT-Takeda Program, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative, the MIT Mobility Initiative, the MIT Quest for Intelligence, the MIT AI Hardware Program, the MIT-Northpond Program, the MIT Faculty Founder Initiative, and the MIT-Novo Nordisk Artificial Intelligence Postdoctoral Fellows Program.

Chandrakasan also welcomed and supported 110 new faculty members to the School of Engineering, including in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, which jointly reports between the School of Engineering and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. He also oversaw 274 faculty and senior researcher promotion cases in Engineering Council.

One of his priorities as dean was to bolster the School of Engineering’s sense of community, launching several programs to give students and staff a more active role in shaping the initiatives and operations of the school, including the Staff Advice and Implementation Committee (SAIC), the undergraduate Student Advisory Group, the Graduate Student Advisory Group (GradSage), and the MIT School of Engineering Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for Engineering Excellence. Working closely with GradSage, Chandrakasan also played a key role in establishing the Daniel J. Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership Program.

A champion for EECS research and education

Chandrakasan earned his BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California at Berkeley. After joining the MIT faculty, he was the director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories from 2006 until 2011, when he became the EECS department head.

An active researcher throughout his time at MIT, Chandrakasan has led the MIT Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group even while taking on new administrative roles. The group works on the design and implementation of integrated systems, from ultra-low-power wireless sensors and multimedia devices to biomedical systems. Chandrakasan has more than 120,000 citations and has advised or co-advised and graduated 78 PhD students. He says this experience will help him succeed as provost.

“To understand the pain points of our researcher scholars, you have to be in the trenches,” he says.

While at the helm of EECS, Chandrakasan also launched a number of initiatives on behalf of the department’s students. For example, the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, more commonly known as “SuperUROP,” is a year-long independent research program that launched in EECS in 2012 and expanded to the whole School of Engineering in 2015.

Chandrakasan also initiated the Rising Stars program in EECS, an annual event that convenes graduate and postdoc women for the purpose of sharing advice about the early stages of an academic career. Another program for EECS postdocs, Postdoc6, aimed to foster a sense of community for postdocs and help them develop skills that will serve their careers.

As higher education faces new challenges, Chandrakasan says he is looking forward to helping MIT position itself for the future. “I'm not afraid to try bold things,” he says.

The European Commission has taken an important step toward protecting minors online by releasing draft guidelines under Article 28 of the Digital Services Act (DSA). EFF recently submitted feedback to the Commission’s Targeted Consultation, emphasizing a critical point: Online safety for young people must not come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and equitable access to digital spaces.

We support the Commission’s commitment to proportionality, rights-based protections, and its efforts to include young voices in shaping these guidelines. But we remain deeply concerned by the growing reliance on invasive age assurance and verification technologies—tools that too often lead to surveillance, discrimination, and censorship.

Age verification systems typically depend on government-issued ID or biometric data, posing significant risks to privacy and shutting out millions of people without formal documentation. Age estimation methods fare no better: they’re inaccurate, especially for marginalized groups, and often rely on sensitive behavioral or biometric data. Meanwhile, vague mandates to protect against “unrealistic beauty standards” or “potentially risky content” threaten to overblock legitimate expression, disproportionately harming vulnerable users, including LGBTQ+ youth.

By placing a disproportionate emphasis on age assurance as a necessary tool to safeguard minors, the guidelines do not address the root causes of risks encountered by all users, including minors, and instead merely focus on treating their symptoms.

Safety matters—but so do privacy, access to information, and the fundamental rights of all users. We urge the Commission to avoid endorsing disproportionate, one-size-fits-all technical solutions. Instead, we recommend user-empowering approaches: Strong default privacy settings, transparency in recommender systems, and robust user control over the content they see and share.

The DSA presents an opportunity to protect minors while upholding digital rights. We hope the final guidelines reflect that balance.

Read more about digital identity and the future of age verification in Europe here.

Through budget cuts and layoffs, the administration has begun to cripple the government's ability to research global warming.

Melissa Hortman was killed Saturday by a gunman. The former state House speaker helped pass some of the nation's strongest climate policies.

The group of young people argue that the president's orders to "unleash" fossil fuels violate their constitutional rights.

Deadly temperatures can lead to lawsuits, lost productivity and falling asset value, Swiss Re said in a new report.

Local officials say the federal government has long taken a feast-or-famine approach to transportation emergency spending.

The largest property insurer got a 17 percent emergency rate hike last month.

Ian Choundri said the Trump administration's decision was politically motivated and based on faulty data.

A loophole-free 2040 emissions-reduction goal has little support, a POLITICO survey of 27 ministries shows.

With a leadership race in full flow, should the left-wing outfit fight from Westminster — or tap into the grassroots?

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 16 June 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02361-7

Fair climate targets aligned with the Paris Agreement can be calculated in multiple ways, yielding diverse outcomes. Researchers unpack how equity, global strategies and political and social uncertainties shape fair share allocations, using them to assess nationally determined contributions and guide global climate finance.

In the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, ELISA tests provide critical quality control during drug development and manufacturing. The tests can precisely quantify protein levels, but they also require hours of work by trained technicians and specialized equipment. That makes them prohibitively expensive, driving up the costs of drugs and putting research testing out of reach for many.

Now the Advanced Silicon Group (ASG), founded by Marcie Black ’94, MEng ’95, PhD ’03 and Bill Rever, is commercializing a new technology that could dramatically lower the time and costs associated with protein sensing. ASG’s proprietary sensor combines silicon nanowires with antibodies that can bind to different proteins to create a highly sensitive measurement of their concentration in a given solution.

The tests can measure the concentration of many different proteins and other molecules at once, with results typically available in less than 15 minutes. Users simply place a tiny amount of solution on the sensor, rinse the sensor, and then insert it into ASG’s handheld testing system.

“We’re making it 15 times faster and 15 times lower cost to test for proteins,” Black says. “That’s on the drug development side. This could also make the manufacturing of drugs significantly faster and more cost-effective. It could revolutionize how we create drugs in this country and around the world.”

Since developing its sensor, ASG’s team has received inquiries from a long list of people interested in using them to develop new therapeutics, help elite athletes train, and understand soil concentrations in agriculture, among other applications.

For now, though, the small company is focusing on lowering barriers in health care by selling its low-cost sensors to companies developing and manufacturing drugs.

“Right now, money is a limiting factor in researching and creating new drugs,” explains Marissa Gillis, a member of ASG’s team. “Making these processes faster and less costly could dramatically increase the amount of biologic testing and creation. It also makes it more viable for companies to develop drugs for rare conditions with smaller markets.”

A family away from home

Black grew up in a small town in Ohio before coming to MIT for three degrees in electrical engineering.

“Going to MIT changed my life,” Black says. “It opened my eyes to the possibilities of doing science and engineering to make the world a better place. Also, just being around so many amazing people taught me how to dream big.”

For her PhD, Black worked with the late Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus, a highly acclaimed physicist and nanotechnology pioneer who Black remembers for her mentorship and compassion as much as her contributions to our understanding of exotic materials. Black couldn’t always afford to go home for holidays, so she’d spend Thanksgivings with the Dresselhaus family.

“Millie was an amazing person, and her family was a family away from home for me,” Black says. “Millie continued to be my mentor — and I hear she did this with a lot of students — until the day she died.”

For her thesis, Black studied the optical properties of nanowires, which taught her about the nanostructures and optoelectronics she’d eventually use as part of the Advanced Silicon Group.

Following graduation, Black worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory before founding the company Bandgap Engineering, which developed efficient, low-cost nanostructured solar cells. That technology was subsequently commercialized by other companies and became the subject of a patent dispute. In 2015, Black spun out the Advanced Silicon Group to apply a similar technology to protein sensing.

ASG’s sensors combine known approaches for sensitizing silicon to biological molecules, using the photoelectric properties of silicon nanowires to detect proteins electrically.

“It’s basically a solar cell that we functionalize with an antibody that’s specific to a certain protein,” Black says. “When the protein gets close, it brings an electrical charge with it that will repel light carriers inside the silicon, and doing that changes how well the electron and the holes can recombine. By looking at the photocurrent when you’re exposed to a solution, you can tell how much protein is bound to the surface and thus the concentration of that protein.”

ASG was accepted into MIT.nano’s START.nano startup accelerator and MIT’s Office of Corporate Relations Startup Exchange Program soon after its founding, which gave Black’s team access to cutting-edge equipment at MIT and connected her with potential investors and partners.

Black has also received broad support from MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service and worked with researchers from MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL), where she conducted research as a student.

“Even though the company is in Lowell, [Massachusetts], I’m constantly going to MIT and getting help from professors and researchers at MIT,” Black says.

Biosensing for impact

From extensive discussions with people in the pharmaceutical industry, Black learned about the need for a more affordable protein-measurement tool. During drug development and manufacturing, protein levels must be measured to detect problems such as contamination from host cell proteins, which can be fatal to patients even at very low quantities.

“It can cost more than $1 billion to develop a drug,” Black says. “A big part of the process is bioprocessing, and 50 to 80 percent of bioprocessing is dedicated to purifying these unwanted proteins. That challenge leads to drugs being more expensive and taking longer to get to market.”

ASG has since worked with researchers to develop tests for biomarkers associated with lung cancer and dormant tuberculosis and has received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the commonwealth of Massachusetts, including funding to develop tests for host cell proteins.

This year, ASG announced a partnership with Axogen to help the regenerative nerve repair company grow nerve tissue.

“There’s a lot of interest in using our sensor for applications in regenerative medicine,” Black says. “Another example we envision is if you’re sick in rural India and there’s no doctor nearby, you can show up at a clinic, nurses can give this to you and test for the flu, Covid-19, food poisoning, pregnancy, and 10 other things all at once. The results come in 15 minutes, then you could get what you need or teleconference a doctor.”

ASG is currently able to produce about 2,000 of its sensors on 8-inch chips per production line in its partner’s semiconductor foundry. As the company continues scaling up production, Black is hopeful the sensors will lower costs at every step between drug developers and patients.

“We really want to lower the barriers for testing so that everyone has access to good health care,” Black says. “Beyond that, there are so many applications for protein sensing. It’s really where the rubber hits the road in biology, agriculture, diagnostics. We’re excited to partner with leaders in every one of these industries.”

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:

• I’m speaking at the International Conference on Digital Trust, AI and the Future in Edinburgh, Scotland on Tuesday, June 24 at 4:00 PM.

The list is maintained on this page.

Video of the stubby squid (Rossia pacifica) from offshore Vancouver Island.

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

Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, along with colleagues from KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH), have developed a first-of-its-kind device to profile the immune function of newborns.   Using a single drop of blood, the BiophysicaL Immune Profiling for Infants (BLIPI) system provides real-time insights into newborns’ immune responses, enabling the early detection of severe inflammatory conditions and allowing for timely interventions. This critical innovation addresses the urgent and unmet need for rapid and minimally invasive diagnostic tools to protect vulnerable newborns, especially those born prematurely. Critical unmet need in newborn care Premature infants are particularly vulnerable to life-threatening conditions such as sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). Newborn sepsis — a bloodstream infection occurring in the first weeks of life — is a major global health challenge, causing up to 1 million infant deaths worldwide annually. NEC, a serious intestinal disease that causes severe inflammation, is one of the leading causes of death in premature babies — up to 50 percent of low-birth -eight neonates who get NEC do not survive. Infants can show vague symptoms, making diagnosis of these conditions challenging. However, both conditions can worsen rapidly and require immediate medical intervention for the best chance of recovery. Current diagnostic methods to detect and prevent these serious conditions in newborns rely on large blood samples — up to 1 milliliter, a significant quantity of blood for a newborn — and lengthy laboratory processes. This is not ideal for newborns whose total blood volume may be as little as 50 ml among very premature infants less than 28 weeks old, which limits repeated or high-volume sampling and can potentially lead to anemia and other complications. At the same time, conventional tests — such as blood cultures or inflammatory panels — may take hours to days to return actionable results, limiting prompt targeted clinical interventions. The novel BLIPI device addresses these challenges by requiring only 0.05 ml of blood and delivering results within 15 minutes. Revolutionizing newborn care In a study, “Whole blood biophysical immune profiling of newborn infants correlates with immune responses,” published in Pediatric Research, the researchers demonstrated how BLIPI leverages microfluidic technology to measure how immune cells change when fighting infection by assessing their size and flexibility. Unlike conventional tests that only look for the presence of germs, BLIPI directly shows how a baby’s immune system is responding. The cell changes that BLIPI detects align with standard tests doctors rely on, including C-reactive protein levels, white blood cell counts, and immature-to-total neutrophil ratios. This testing format can quickly reveal whether a baby’s immune system is fighting an infection. In the study, BLIPI was used to screen 19 infants at multiple time points — eight full-term and 11 preterm — and showed clear differences in how immune cells looked and behaved between the babies. Notably, when one premature baby developed a serious blood infection, the device was able to detect significant immune cell changes. This shows its potential in detecting infections early. The work was led by researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research groups within SMART. Just one drop of blood BLIPI is a portable device that can give results at the ward or the neonatal intensive care units, removing the need for transporting blood samples to the laboratory and making it easily implementable in resource-limited or rural health-care settings. Significantly, BLIPI needs just one drop of blood, and 1/20 the blood volume than what existing methods require. These swift results can help clinicians make timely, lifesaving decisions in critical situations such as sepsis or NEC, where early treatment is vital. “Our goal was to create a diagnostic tool that works within the unique constraints of neonatal care — minimal blood volume, rapid turnaround, and high sensitivity. BLIPI represents a major step forward by providing clinicians with fast, actionable immune health data using a noninvasive method, where it can make a real difference for newborns in critical care,” says Kerwin Kwek, research scientist at SMART CAMP and SMART AMR, and co-lead author of the study. “BLIPI exemplifies our vision to bridge the gap between scientific innovation and clinical need. By leveraging microfluidic technologies to extract real-time immune insights from whole blood, we are not only accelerating diagnostics but also redefining how we monitor immune health in fragile populations. Our work reflects a new paradigm in point-of-care diagnostics: rapid, precise, and patient-centric,” says MIT Professor Jongyoon Han, co-lead principal investigator at SMART CAMP, principal investigator at SMART AMR, and corresponding author of the paper. “KKH cares for about two-thirds of all babies born weighing less than 1,500 grams in Singapore. These premature babies often struggle to fight infections with their immature immune systems. With BLIPI, a single prick to the baby’s finger or heel can give us rapid insights into the infant’s immune response within minutes. This allows us to tailor treatments more precisely and respond faster to give these fragile babies the best chance at a healthy start not just in their early days, but throughout their lives,” says Assistant Professor Yeo Kee Thai, senior consultant at the Department of Neonatology at KKH, and senior author of the study. Future research will focus on larger clinical trials to validate BLIPI’s diagnostic accuracy across diverse neonatal populations with different age groups and medical conditions. The researchers also plan to refine the device’s design for widespread adoption in hospitals globally, bringing a much-needed diagnostic solution for vulnerable infants at their cot side. Beyond hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and researchers may also leverage BLIPI in clinical trials to assess immune responses to neonatal therapies in real-time — a potential game-changer for research and development in pediatric medicine. The research conducted at SMART is supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise program. This collaboration exemplifies how Singapore brings together institutions as part of interdisciplinary, multi-institution efforts to advance technology for global impact. The work from KKH was partially supported by the Nurturing Clinician Scientist Scheme under the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Clinical Programme.

MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), a pioneering cross-disciplinary body that helped give a major boost to sustainability and solutions to climate change at MIT, will close as a separate entity at the end of June. But that’s far from the end for its wide-ranging work, which will go forward under different auspices. Many of its key functions will become part of MIT’s recently launched Climate Project. John Fernandez, head of ESI for nearly a decade, will return to the School of Architecture and Planning, where some of ESI’s important work will continue as part of a new interdisciplinary lab.

When the ideas that led to the founding of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative first began to be discussed, its founders recall, there was already a great deal of work happening at MIT relating to climate change and sustainability. As Professor John Sterman of the MIT Sloan School of Management puts it, “there was a lot going on, but it wasn’t integrated. So the whole added up to less than the sum of its parts.”

ESI was founded in 2014 to help fill that coordinating role, and in the years since it has accomplished a wide range of significant milestones in research, education, and communication about sustainable solutions in a wide range of areas. Its founding director, Professor Susan Solomon, helmed it for its first year, and then handed the leadership to Fernandez, who has led it since 2015.

“There wasn’t much of an ecosystem [on sustainability] back then,” Solomon recalls. But with the help of ESI and some other entities, that ecosystem has blossomed. She says that Fernandez “has nurtured some incredible things under ESI,” including work on nature-based climate solutions, and also other areas such as sustainable mining, and reduction of plastics in the environment.

Desiree Plata, director of MIT’s Climate and Sustainability Consortium and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, says that one key achievement of the initiative has been in “communication with the external world, to help take really complex systems and topics and put them in not just plain-speak, but something that’s scientifically rigorous and defensible, for the outside world to consume.”

In particular, ESI has created three very successful products, which continue under the auspices of the Climate Project. These include the popular TIL Climate Podcast, the Webby Award-winning Climate Portal website, and the online climate primer developed with Professor Kerry Emanuel. “These are some of the most frequented websites at MIT,” Plata says, and “the impact of this work on the global knowledge base cannot be overstated.”

Fernandez says that ESI has played a significant part in helping to catalyze what has become “a rich institutional landscape of work in sustainability and climate change” at MIT. He emphasizes three major areas where he feels the ESI has been able to have the most impact: engaging the MIT community, initiating and stewarding critical environmental research, and catalyzing efforts to promote sustainability as fundamental to the mission of a research university.

Engagement of the MIT community, he says, began with two programs: a research seed grant program and the creation of MIT’s undergraduate minor in environment and sustainability, launched in 2017.

ESI also created a Rapid Response Group, which gave students a chance to work on real-world projects with external partners, including government agencies, community groups, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses. In the process, they often learned why dealing with environmental challenges in the real world takes so much longer than they might have thought, he says, and that a challenge that “seemed fairly straightforward at the outset turned out to be more complex and nuanced than expected.”

The second major area, initiating and stewarding environmental research, grew into a set of six specific program areas: natural climate solutions, mining, cities and climate change, plastics and the environment, arts and climate, and climate justice.

These efforts included collaborations with a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, three successive presidential administrations from Colombia, and members of communities affected by climate change, including coal miners, indigenous groups, various cities, companies, the U.N., many agencies — and the popular musical group Coldplay, which has pledged to work toward climate neutrality for its performances. “It was the role that the ESI played as a host and steward of these research programs that may serve as a key element of our legacy,” Fernandez says.

The third broad area, he says, “is the idea that the ESI as an entity at MIT would catalyze this movement of a research university toward sustainability as a core priority.” While MIT was founded to be an academic partner to the industrialization of the world, “aren’t we in a different world now? The kind of massive infrastructure planning and investment and construction that needs to happen to decarbonize the energy system is maybe the largest industrialization effort ever undertaken. Even more than in the recent past, the set of priorities driving this have to do with sustainable development.”

Overall, Fernandez says, “we did everything we could to infuse the Institute in its teaching and research activities with the idea that the world is now in dire need of sustainable solutions.”

Fernandez “has nurtured some incredible things under ESI,” Solomon says. “It’s been a very strong and useful program, both for education and research.” But it is appropriate at this time to distribute its projects to other venues, she says. “We do now have a major thrust in the Climate Project, and you don’t want to have redundancies and overlaps between the two.”

Fernandez says “one of the missions of the Climate Project is really acting to coalesce and aggregate lots of work around MIT.” Now, with the Climate Project itself, along with the Climate Policy Center and the Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, it makes more sense for ESI’s climate-related projects to be integrated into these new entities, and other projects that are less directly connected to climate to take their places in various appropriate departments or labs, he says.

“We did enough with ESI that we made it possible for these other centers to really flourish,” he says. “And in that sense, we played our role.”

As of June 1, Fernandez has returned to his role as professor of architecture and urbanism and building technology in the School of Architecture and Planning, where he directs the Urban Metabolism Group. He will also be starting up a new group called Environment ResearchAction (ERA) to continue ESI work in cities, nature, and artificial intelligence. 

The agency’s analysis of rolling back climate rules on power plants undermines its administrator’s assertions that they would have capsized the electric sector.