Is this movie review a rave or a pan? Is this news story about business or technology? Is this online chatbot conversation veering off into giving financial advice? Is this online medical information site giving out misinformation?

These kinds of automated conversations, whether they involve seeking a movie or restaurant review or getting information about your bank account or health records, are becoming increasingly prevalent. More than ever, such evaluations are being made by highly sophisticated algorithms, known as text classifiers, rather than by human beings. But how can we tell how accurate these classifications really are?

Now, a team at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) has come up with an innovative approach to not only measure how well these classifiers are doing their job, but then go one step further and show how to make them more accurate.

The new evaluation and remediation software was developed by Kalyan Veeramachaneni, a principal research scientist at LIDS, his students Lei Xu and Sarah Alnegheimish, and two others. The software package is being made freely available for download by anyone who wants to use it.

A standard method for testing these classification systems is to create what are known as synthetic examples — sentences that closely resemble ones that have already been classified. For example, researchers might take a sentence that has already been tagged by a classifier program as being a rave review, and see if changing a word or a few words while retaining the same meaning could fool the classifier into deeming it a pan. Or a sentence that was determined to be misinformation might get misclassified as accurate. This ability to fool the classifiers makes these adversarial examples.

People have tried various ways to find the vulnerabilities in these classifiers, Veeramachaneni says. But existing methods of finding these vulnerabilities have a hard time with this task and miss many examples that they should catch, he says.

Increasingly, companies are trying to use such evaluation tools in real time, monitoring the output of chatbots used for various purposes to try to make sure they are not putting out improper responses. For example, a bank might use a chatbot to respond to routine customer queries such as checking account balances or applying for a credit card, but it wants to ensure that its responses could never be interpreted as financial advice, which could expose the company to liability. “Before showing the chatbot’s response to the end user, they want to use the text classifier to detect whether it’s giving financial advice or not,” Veeramachaneni says. But then it’s important to test that classifier to see how reliable its evaluations are.

“These chatbots, or summarization engines or whatnot are being set up across the board,” he says, to deal with external customers and within an organization as well, for example providing information about HR issues. It’s important to put these text classifiers into the loop to detect things that they are not supposed to say, and filter those out before the output gets transmitted to the user.

That’s where the use of adversarial examples comes in — those sentences that have already been classified but then produce a different response when they are slightly modified while retaining the same meaning. How can people confirm that the meaning is the same? By using another large language model (LLM) that interprets and compares meanings. So, if the LLM says the two sentences mean the same thing, but the classifier labels them differently, “that is a sentence that is adversarial — it can fool the classifier,” Veeramachaneni says. And when the researchers examined these adversarial sentences, “we found that most of the time, this was just a one-word change,” although the people using LLMs to generate these alternate sentences often didn’t realize that.

Further investigation, using LLMs to analyze many thousands of examples, showed that certain specific words had an outsized influence in changing the classifications, and therefore the testing of a classifier’s accuracy could focus on this small subset of words that seem to make the most difference. They found that one-tenth of 1 percent of all the 30,000 words in the system’s vocabulary could account for almost half of all these reversals of classification, in some specific applications.

Lei Xu PhD ’23, a recent graduate from LIDS who performed much of the analysis as part of his thesis work, “used a lot of interesting estimation techniques to figure out what are the most powerful words that can change the overall classification, that can fool the classifier,” Veeramachaneni says. The goal is to make it possible to do much more narrowly targeted searches, rather than combing through all possible word substitutions, thus making the computational task of generating adversarial examples much more manageable. “He’s using large language models, interestingly enough, as a way to understand the power of a single word.”

Then, also using LLMs, he searches for other words that are closely related to these powerful words, and so on, allowing for an overall ranking of words according to their influence on the outcomes. Once these adversarial sentences have been found, they can be used in turn to retrain the classifier to take them into account, increasing the robustness of the classifier against those mistakes.

Making classifiers more accurate may not sound like a big deal if it’s just a matter of classifying news articles into categories, or deciding whether reviews of anything from movies to restaurants are positive or negative. But increasingly, classifiers are being used in settings where the outcomes really do matter, whether preventing the inadvertent release of sensitive medical, financial, or security information, or helping to guide important research, such as into properties of chemical compounds or the folding of proteins for biomedical applications, or in identifying and blocking hate speech or known misinformation.

As a result of this research, the team introduced a new metric, which they call p, which provides a measure of how robust a given classifier is against single-word attacks. And because of the importance of such misclassifications, the research team has made its products available as open access for anyone to use. The package consists of two components: SP-Attack, which generates adversarial sentences to test classifiers in any particular application, and SP-Defense, which aims to improve the robustness of the classifier by generating and using adversarial sentences to retrain the model.

In some tests, where competing methods of testing classifier outputs allowed a 66 percent success rate by adversarial attacks, this team’s system cut that attack success rate almost in half, to 33.7 percent. In other applications, the improvement was as little as a 2 percent difference, but even that can be quite important, Veeramachaneni says, since these systems are being used for so many billions of interactions that even a small percentage can affect millions of transactions.

The team’s results were published on July 7 in the journal Expert Systems in a paper by Xu, Veeramachaneni, and Alnegheimish of LIDS, along with Laure Berti-Equille at IRD in Marseille, France, and Alfredo Cuesta-Infante at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, in Spain. 

“Manufacturing is the engine of society, and it is the backbone of robust, resilient economies,” says John Hart, head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) and faculty co-director of the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM). “With manufacturing a lively topic in today’s news, there’s a renewed appreciation and understanding of the importance of manufacturing to innovation, to economic and national security, and to daily lives.”

Launched this May, INM will “help create a transformation of manufacturing through new technology, through development of talent, and through an understanding of how to scale manufacturing in a way that enables imparts higher productivity and resilience, drives adoption of new technologies, and creates good jobs,” Hart says.

INM is one of MIT’s strategic initiatives and builds on the successful three-year-old Manufacturing@MIT program. “It’s a recognition by MIT that manufacturing is an Institute-wide theme and an Institute-wide priority, and that manufacturing connects faculty and students across campus,” says Hart. Alongside Hart, INM’s faculty co-directors are Institute Professor Suzanne Berger and Chris Love, professor of chemical engineering.

The initiative is pursuing four main themes: reimagining manufacturing technologies and systems, elevating the productivity and human experience of manufacturing, scaling up new manufacturing, and transforming the manufacturing base.

Breaking manufacturing barriers for corporations

Amgen, Autodesk, Flex, GE Vernova, PTC, Sanofi, and Siemens are founding members of INM’s industry consortium. These industry partners will work closely with MIT faculty, researchers, and students across many aspects of manufacturing-related research, both in broad-scale initiatives and in particular areas of shared interests. Membership requires a minimum three-year commitment of $500,000 a year to manufacturing-related activities at MIT, including the INM membership fee of $275,000 per year, which supports several core activities that engage the industry members.

One major thrust for INM industry collaboration is the deployment and adoption of AI and automation in manufacturing. This effort will include seed research projects at MIT, collaborative case studies, and shared strategy development.

INM also offers companies participation in the MIT-wide New Manufacturing Research effort, which is studying the trajectories of specific manufacturing industries and examining cross-cutting themes such as technology and financing.

Additionally, INM will concentrate on education for all professions in manufacturing, with alliances bringing together corporations, community colleges, government agencies, and other partners. “We'll scale our curriculum to broader audiences, from aspiring manufacturing workers and aspiring production line supervisors all the way up to engineers and executives,” says Hart.

In workforce training, INM will collaborate with companies broadly to help understand the challenges and frame its overall workforce agenda, and with individual firms on specific challenges, such as acquiring suitably prepared employees for a new factory.

Importantly, industry partners will also engage directly with students. Founding member Flex, for instance, hosted MIT researchers and students at the Flex Institute of Technology in Sorocaba, Brazil, developing new solutions for electronics manufacturing.

“History shows that you need to innovate in manufacturing alongside the innovation in products,” Hart comments. “At MIT, as more students take classes in manufacturing, they’ll think more about key manufacturing issues as they decide what research problems they want to solve, or what choices they make as they prototype their devices. The same is true for industry — companies that operate at the frontier of manufacturing, whether through internal capabilities or their supply chains, are positioned to be on the frontier of product innovation and overall growth.”

“We’ll have an opportunity to bring manufacturing upstream to the early stage of research, designing new processes and new devices with scalability in mind,” he says.

Additionally, MIT expects to open new manufacturing-related labs and to further broaden cooperation with industry at existing shared facilities, such as MIT.nano. Hart says that facilities will also invite tighter collaborations with corporations — not just providing advanced equipment, but working jointly on, say, new technologies for weaving textiles, or speeding up battery manufacturing.

Homing in on the United States

INM is a global project that brings a particular focus on the United States, which remains the world’s second-largest manufacturing economy, but has suffered a significant decline in manufacturing employment and innovation.

One key to reversing this trend and reinvigorating the U.S. manufacturing base is advocacy for manufacturing’s critical role in society and the career opportunities it offers.

“No one really disputes the importance of manufacturing,” Hart says. “But we need to elevate interest in manufacturing as a rewarding career, from the production workers to manufacturing engineers and leaders, through advocacy, education programs, and buy-in from industry, government, and academia.”

MIT is in a unique position to convene industry, academic, and government stakeholders in manufacturing to work together on this vital issue, he points out.

Moreover, in times of radical and rapid changes in manufacturing, “we need to focus on deploying new technologies into factories and supply chains,” Hart says. “Technology is not all of the solution, but for the U.S. to expand our manufacturing base, we need to do it with technology as a key enabler, embracing companies of all sizes, including small and medium enterprises.”

“As AI becomes more capable, and automation becomes more flexible and more available, these are key building blocks upon which you can address manufacturing challenges,” he says. “AI and automation offer new accelerated ways to develop, deploy, and monitor production processes, which present a huge opportunity and, in some cases, a necessity.”

“While manufacturing is always a combination of old technology, new technology, established practice, and new ways of thinking, digital technology gives manufacturers an opportunity to leapfrog competitors,” Hart says. “That’s very, very powerful for the U.S. and any company, or country, that aims to create differentiated capabilities.”

Fortunately, in recent years, investors have increasingly bought into new manufacturing in the United States. “They see the opportunity to re-industrialize, to build the factories and production systems of the future,” Hart says.

“That said, building new manufacturing is capital-intensive, and takes time,” he adds. “So that’s another area where it’s important to convene stakeholders and to think about how startups and growth-stage companies build their capital portfolios, how large industry can support an ecosystem of small businesses and young companies, and how to develop talent to support those growing companies.”

All these concerns and opportunities in the manufacturing ecosystem play to MIT’s strengths. “MIT’s DNA of cross-disciplinary collaboration and working with industry can let us create a lot of impact,” Hart emphasizes. “We can understand the practical challenges. We can also explore breakthrough ideas in research and cultivate successful outcomes, all the way to new companies and partnerships. Sometimes those are seen as disparate approaches, but we like to bring them together.”

“It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done at MIT,” says Haley Nakamura, a second-year MEng student in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). She’s not reflecting on a class, final exam, or research paper. Nakamura is talking about the experience of being a teaching assistant (TA). “It’s really an art form, in that there is no formula for being a good teacher. It’s a skill, and something you have to continuously work at and adapt to different people.”

Nakamura, like approximately 16 percent of her EECS MEng peers, balances her own coursework with teaching responsibilities. The TA role is complex, nuanced, and at MIT, can involve much more planning and logistics than you might imagine. Nakamura works on a central computer science (CS) course, 6.3900 (Introduction to Machine Learning), which registers around 400-500 students per semester. For that enrollment, the course requires eight instructors at the lecturer/professor level; 15 TAs, between the undergraduate and graduate level; and about 50 lab assistants (LAs). Students are split across eight sections corresponding to each senior instructor, with a group of TAs and LAs for each section of 60-70 students.

To keep everyone moving forward at the same pace, coordination and organization are key. “A lot of the reason I got my initial TA-ship was because I was pretty organized,” Nakamura explains. “Everyone here at MIT can be so busy that it can be difficult to be on top of things, and students will be the first to point out logistical confusion and inconsistencies. If they’re worried about some quirk on the website, or wondering how their grades are being calculated, those things can prevent them from focusing on content.” 

Nakamura's organizational skills made her a good candidate to spot and deal with potential wrinkles before they derailed a course section. “When I joined the course, we wanted someone on the TA side to be more specifically responsible for underlying administrative tasks, so I became the first head TA for the course. Since then, we’ve built that role up more and more. There is now a head TA, a head undergraduate TA, and section leads working on internal documentation such as instructions for how to improve content and how to manage office hours.” The result of this administrative work is consistency across sections and semesters.

The other side of a TA-ship is, of course, teaching. “I was eager to engage with students in a meaningful way,” says Soroush Araei, a sixth-year graduate student who had already fulfilled the teaching requirement for his degree in electrical engineering, but who jumped at the chance to teach alongside his PhD advisor. “I enjoy teaching, and have always found that explaining concepts to others deepens my own understanding.” He was recently awarded the ​MIT School of Engineering’s 2025 Graduate Student Teaching and Mentoring Award, which honors “a graduate student in the School of Engineering who has demonstrated extraordinary teaching and mentoring as a teaching or research assistant.” Araei’s dedication comes at the price of sleep. “Juggling my own research with my TA duties was no small feat. I often found myself in the lab for long hours, helping students troubleshoot their circuits. While their design simulations looked perfect, the circuits they implemented on protoboards didn’t always perform as expected. I had to dive deep into the issues alongside the students, which often required considerable time and effort.”

The rewards for Araei’s work are often intrinsic. “Teaching has shown me that there are always deeper layers to understanding. There are concepts I thought I had mastered, but I realized gaps in my own knowledge when trying to explain them,” he says. Another challenge: the variety of background knowledge between students in a single class. “Some had never encountered transistors, while others had tape-out experience. Designing problem sets and selecting questions for office hours required careful planning to keep all students engaged.” For Araei, some of the best moments have come during office hours. “Witnessing the ‘aha’ moment on a student’s face when a complex concept finally clicked was incredibly rewarding.”

The pursuit of the “aha” moment is a common thread between TAs. “I still struggle with the feeling that you’re responsible for someone’s understanding in a given topic, and, if you’re not doing a good job, that could affect that person for the rest of their life,” says Nakamura. “But the flip side of that moment of confusion is when someone has the ‘aha!’ moment as you’re talking to them, when you’re able to explain something that wasn’t conveyed in the other materials. It was your help that broke through and gave understanding. And that reward really overruns the fear of causing confusion.”

Hope Dargan ’21, MEng ’23, a second-year PhD student in EECS, uses her role as a graduate instructor to try to reach students who may not fit into the stereotype of the scientist. She started her career at MIT planning to major in CS and become a software engineer, but a missionary trip to Sweden in 2016-17 (when refugees from the Syrian civil war were resettling in the region) sparked a broader interest in both the Middle East and in how groups of people contextualized their own narratives. When Dargan returned to MIT, she took on a history degree, writing her thesis on the experiences of queer Mormon women. Additionally, she taught for MEET (the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow), an educational initiative for Israeli and Palestinian high school students. “I realized I loved teaching, and this experience set me on a trajectory to teaching as a career.” 

Dargan gained her teaching license as an undergrad through the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP), then joined the MEng program, in which she designed an educational intervention for students who were struggling in class 6.101 (Fundamentals of Programming). The next step was a PhD. “Teaching is so context-dependent,” says Dargan, who was awarded the Goodwin Medal for her teaching efforts in 2023. “When I taught students for MEET, it was very different from when I was teaching eighth graders at Josiah Quincy Upper School for my teaching license, and very different now when I teach students in 6.101, versus when I teach the LGO [Leaders for Global Operations] students Python in the summers. Each student has their own unique perspective on what’s motivating them, how they learn, and what they connect to … So even if I’ve taught the material for five years (as I have for 6.101, because I was an LA, then a TA, and now an instructor), improving my teaching is always challenging. Getting better at adapting my teaching to the context of the students and their stories, which are ever-evolving, is always interesting.”

Although Dargan considers teaching one of her greatest passions, she is clear-eyed about the cost of the profession. “I think the things that we’re passionate about tell us a lot about ourselves, both our strengths and our weaknesses, and teaching has taught me a lot about my weaknesses,” she says. “Teaching is a tough career, because it tends to take people who care a lot and are perfectionists, and it can lead to a lot of burnout.”

Dargan's students have also expressed enthusiasm and gratitude for her work. “Hope is objectively the most helpful instructor I’ve ever had,” said one anonymous reviewer. Another wrote, “I never felt judged when I asked her questions, and she was great at guiding me through problems by asking motivating questions … I truly felt like she cared about me as a student and person.” Dargan herself is modest about her role, saying, “For me, the trade-off between teaching and research is that teaching has an immediate day-to-day impact, while research has this unknown potential for long-term impact.” 

With the responsibility to instruct an ever-growing percentage of the Institute’s students, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science relies heavily on dedicated and passionate students like Nakamura, Araei, and Dargan. As their caring and humane influence ripples outward through thousands of new electrical engineers and computer scientists, the day-to-day impact of their work is clear; but the long-term impact may be greater than any of them know.

Around the world, about 2 billion people suffer from iron deficiency, which can lead to anemia, impaired brain development in children, and increased infant mortality.

To combat that problem, MIT researchers have come up with a new way to fortify foods and beverages with iron, using small crystalline particles. These particles, known as metal-organic frameworks, could be sprinkled on food, added to staple foods such as bread, or incorporated into drinks like coffee and tea.

“We’re creating a solution that can be seamlessly added to staple foods across different regions,” says Ana Jaklenec, a principal investigator at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “What’s considered a staple in Senegal isn’t the same as in India or the U.S., so our goal was to develop something that doesn’t react with the food itself. That way, we don’t have to reformulate for every context — it can be incorporated into a wide range of foods and beverages without compromise.”

The particles designed in this study can also carry iodine, another critical nutrient. The particles could also be adapted to carry important minerals such as zinc, calcium, or magnesium.

“We are very excited about this new approach and what we believe is a novel application of metal-organic frameworks to potentially advance nutrition, particularly in the developing world,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute.

Jaklenec and Langer are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in the journal Matter. MIT postdoc Xin Yang and Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang PhD ’24 are the lead authors of the paper.

Iron stabilization

Food fortification can be a successful way to combat nutrient deficiencies, but this approach is often challenging because many nutrients are fragile and break down during storage or cooking. When iron is added to foods, it can react with other molecules in the food, giving the food a metallic taste.

In previous work, Jaklenec’s lab has shown that encapsulating nutrients in polymers can protect them from breaking down or reacting with other molecules. In a small clinical trial, the researchers found that women who ate bread fortified with encapsulated iron were able to absorb the iron from the food.

However, one drawback to this approach is that the polymer adds a lot of bulk to the material, limiting the amount of iron or other nutrients that end up in the food.

“Encapsulating iron in polymers significantly improves its stability and reactivity, making it easier to add to food,” Jaklenec says. “But to be effective, it requires a substantial amount of polymer. That limits how much iron you can deliver in a typical serving, making it difficult to meet daily nutritional targets through fortified foods alone.”

To overcome that challenge, Yang came up with a new idea: Instead of encapsulating iron in a polymer, they could use iron itself as a building block for a crystalline particle known as a metal-organic framework, or MOF (pronounced “moff”).

MOFs consist of metal atoms joined by organic molecules called ligands to create a rigid, cage-like structure. Depending on the combination of metals and ligands chosen, they can be used for a wide variety of applications.

“We thought maybe we could synthesize a metal-organic framework with food-grade ligands and food-grade micronutrients,” Yang says. “Metal-organic frameworks have very high porosity, so they can load a lot of cargo. That’s why we thought we could leverage this platform to make a new metal-organic framework that could be used in the food industry.”

In this case, the researchers designed a MOF consisting of iron bound to a ligand called fumaric acid, which is often used as a food additive to enhance flavor or help preserve food.

This structure prevents iron from reacting with polyphenols — compounds commonly found in foods such as whole grains and nuts, as well as coffee and tea. When iron does react with those compounds, it forms a metal polyphenol complex that cannot be absorbed by the body.

The MOFs’ structure also allows them to remain stable until they reach an acidic environment, such as the stomach, where they break down and release their iron payload.

Double-fortified salts

The researchers also decided to include iodine in their MOF particle, which they call NuMOF. Iodized salt has been very successful at preventing iodine deficiency, and many efforts are now underway to create “double-fortified salts” that would also contain iron.

Delivering these nutrients together has proven difficult because iron and iodine can react with each other, making each one less likely to be absorbed by the body. In this study, the MIT team showed that once they formed their iron-containing MOF particles, they could load them with iodine, in a way that the iron and iodine do not react with each other.

In tests of the particles’ stability, the researchers found that the NuMOFs could withstand long-term storage, high heat and humidity, and boiling water.

Throughout these tests, the particles maintained their structure. When the researchers then fed the particles to mice, they found that both iron and iodine became available in the bloodstream within several hours of the NuMOF consumption.

The researchers are now working on launching a company that is developing coffee and other beverages fortified with iron and iodine. They also hope to continue working toward a double-fortified salt that could be consumed on its own or incorporated into staple food products.

The research was partially supported by J-WAFS Fellowships for Water and Food Solutions.

Other authors of the paper include Fangzheng Chen, Wenhao Gao, Zhiling Zheng, Tian Wang, Erika Yan Wang, Behnaz Eshaghi, and Sydney MacDonald.

Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, has been named the new director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC), effective July 1. The SSRC convenes and supports researchers focused on problems and solutions at the intersection of technology and its societal impacts.

Trancik conducts research on technology innovation and energy systems. At the Trancik Lab, she and her team develop methods drawing on engineering knowledge, data science, and policy analysis. Their work examines the pace and drivers of technological change, helping identify where innovation is occurring most rapidly, how emerging technologies stack up against existing systems, and which performance thresholds matter most for real-world impact. Her models have been used to inform government innovation policy and have been applied across a wide range of industries.

“Professor Trancik’s deep expertise in the societal implications of technology, and her commitment to developing impactful solutions across industries, make her an excellent fit to lead SSRC,” says Maria C. Yang, interim dean of engineering and William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Much of Trancik’s research focuses on the domain of energy systems, and establishing methods for energy technology evaluation, including of their costs, performance, and environmental impacts. She covers a wide range of energy services — including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. Her research has applications in solar and wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission. Trancik is also known for her research on extreme events in renewable energy availability.

A prolific researcher, Trancik has helped measure progress and inform the development of solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and other low-carbon technologies — and anticipate future trends. One of her widely cited contributions includes quantifying learning rates and identifying where targeted investments can most effectively accelerate innovation. These tools have been used by U.S. federal agencies, international organizations, and the private sector to shape energy R&D portfolios, climate policy, and infrastructure planning.

Trancik is committed to engaging and informing the public on energy consumption. She and her team developed the app carboncounter.com, which helps users choose cars with low costs and low environmental impacts.

As an educator, Trancik teaches courses for students across MIT’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

“The question guiding my teaching and research is how do we solve big societal challenges with technology, and how can we be more deliberate in developing and supporting technologies to get us there?” Trancik said in an article about course IDS.521/IDS.065 (Energy Systems for Climate Change Mitigation).

Trancik received her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell University. As a Rhodes Scholar, she completed her PhD in materials science at the University of Oxford. She subsequently worked for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. After serving as an Omidyar Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, she joined MIT in 2010 as a faculty member.

Trancik succeeds Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science and director of IDSS, who previously served as director of SSRC.

Harvey Kent Bowen PhD ’71, a longtime MIT professor celebrated for his pioneering work in manufacturing education, innovative ceramics research, and generous mentorship, died July 17 in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was 83.

At MIT, he was the founding engineering faculty leader of Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) — now Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) — a program that continues to shape engineering and management education nearly four decades later.

Bowen spent 22 years on the MIT faculty, returning to his alma mater after earning both a master’s degree in materials science and a PhD in materials science and ceramics processing there. He held the Ford Professorship of Engineering, with appointments in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, before transitioning to Harvard Business School, where he bridged the worlds of engineering, manufacturing, and management. 

Bowen’s prodigious research output spans 190 articles, 45 Harvard case studies, and two books. In addition to his scholarly contributions, those who knew him best say his visionary understanding of the connection between management and engineering, coupled with his intellect and warm leadership style, set him apart at a time of rapid growth at MIT.  

A pioneering physical ceramics researcher

Bowen was born on Nov. 21, 1941, in Salt Lake City, Utah. As an MIT graduate student in the 1970s, he helped to redefine the study of ceramics — transforming it into the scientific field now known as physical ceramics, which focuses on the structure, properties, and behavior of ceramic materials.

“Prior to that, it was the art of ceramic composition,” says Michael Cima, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering in DMSE. “What Kent and a small group of more-senior DMSE faculty were doing was trying to turn that art into science.”

Bowen advanced the field by applying scientific rigor to how ceramic materials were processed. He applied concepts from the developing field of colloid science — the study of particles evenly distributed in another material — to the manufacturing of ceramics, forever changing how such objects were made.

“That sparked a whole new generation of people taking a different look at how ceramic objects are manufactured,” Cima recalls. “It was an opportunity to make a big change. Despite the fact that physical ceramics — composition, crystal structure and so forth — had turned into a science, there still was this big gap: how do you make these things? Kent thought this was the opportunity for science to have an impact on the field of ceramics.”

One of his greatest scholarly accomplishments was “Introduction to Ceramics, 2nd edition,” with David Kingery and Donald Uhlmann, a foundational textbook he helped write early in his career. The book, published in 1976, helped maintain DMSE’s leading position in ceramics research and education.

“Every PhD student in ceramics studied that book, all 1,000 pages, from beginning to end, to prepare for the PhD qualifying exams,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Ceramics in DMSE. “It covered almost every aspect of the science and engineering of ceramics known at that time. That was why it was both an outstanding teaching text as well as a reference textbook for data.”

In ceramics processing, Bowen was also known for his control of particle size, shape, and size distribution, and how those factors influence sintering, the process of forming solid materials from powders.

Over time, Bowen’s interest in ceramics processing broadened into a larger focus on manufacturing. As such, Bowen was also deeply connected to industry and traveled frequently, especially to Japan, a leader in ceramics manufacturing.

“One time, he came back from Japan and told all of us graduate students that the students there worked so hard they were sleeping in the labs at night — as a way to prod us,” Chiang recalls.

While Bowen’s work in manufacturing began in ceramics, he also became a consultant to major companies, including automakers, and he worked with Lee Iacocca, the Ford executive behind the Mustang. Those experiences also helped spark LFM, which evolved into LGO. Bowen co-founded LFM with former MIT dean of engineering Tom Magnanti.

“I’m still in awe of Kent’s audacity and vision in starting the LFM program. The scale and scope of the program were, even for MIT standards, highly ambitious. Thirty-seven successful years later, we all owe a great sense of gratitude to Kent,” says LGO Executive Director Thomas Roemer, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Bowen as mentor, teacher

Bowen’s scientific leadership was matched by his personal influence. Colleagues recall him as a patient, thoughtful mentor who valued creativity and experimentation.

“He had a lot of patience, and I think students benefited from that patience. He let them go in the directions they wanted to — and then helped them out of the hole when their experiments didn’t work. He was good at that,” Cima says.

His discipline was another hallmark of his character. Chiang was an undergraduate and graduate student when Bowen was a faculty member. He fondly recalls his tendency to get up early, a source of amusement for his 3.01 (Kinetics of Materials) class.

“One time, some students played a joke on him. They got to class before him, set up an electric griddle, and cooked breakfast in the classroom before he arrived,” says Chiang. “When we all arrived, it smelled like breakfast.”

Bowen took a personal interest in Chiang’s career trajectory, arranging for him to spend a summer in Bowen’s lab through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Funded by the Department of Energy, the project explored magnetohydrodynamics: shooting a high-temperature plasma made from coal fly ash into a magnetic field between ceramic electrodes to generate electricity.

“My job was just to sift the fly ash, but it opened my eyes to energy research,” Chiang recalls.

Later, when Chiang was an assistant professor at MIT, Bowen served on his career development committee. He was both encouraging and pragmatic.

“He pushed me to get things done — to submit and publish papers at a time when I really needed the push,” Chiang says. “After all the happy talk, he would say, ‘OK, by what date are you going to submit these papers?’ And that was what I needed.”

After leaving MIT, Bowen joined Harvard Business School (HBS), where he wrote numerous detailed case studies, including one on A123 Systems, a battery company Chiang co-founded in 2001. 

“He was very supportive of our work to commercialize battery technology, and starting new companies in energy and materials,” Chiang says.

Bowen was also a devoted mentor for LFM/LGO students, even while at HBS. Greg Dibb MBA ’04, SM ’04 recalls that Bowen agreed to oversee his work on the management philosophy known as the Toyota Production System (TPS) — a manufacturing system developed by the Japanese automaker — responding kindly to the young student’s outreach and inspiring him with methodical, real-world advice.

“By some miracle, he agreed and made the time to guide me on my thesis work. In the process, he became a mentor and a lifelong friend,” Dibb says. “He inspired me in his way of working and collaborating. He was a master thinker and listener, and he taught me by example through his Socratic style, asking me simple but difficult questions that required rigor of thought.

“I remember he asked me about my plan to learn about manufacturing and TPS. I came to him enthusiastically with a list of books I planned to read. He responded, ‘Do you think a world expert would read those books?’”   

In trying to answer that question, Dibb realized the best way to learn was to go to the factory floor.

“He had a passion for the continuous improvement of manufacturing and operations, and he taught me how to do it by being an observer and a listener just like him — all the time being inspired by his optimism, faith, and charity toward others.”

Faith was a cornerstone of Bowen’s life outside of academia. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Central Germany Mission and held several leadership roles, including bishop of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Ward, stake president of the Cambridge Stake, mission president of the Tacoma, Washington Mission, and temple president of the Boston, Massachusetts Temple. 

An enthusiastic role model who inspired excellence

During early-morning conversations, Cima learned about Bowen’s growing interest in manufacturing, which would spur what is now LGO. Bowen eventually became recognized as an expert in the Toyota Production System, the company’s operational culture and practice which was a major influence on the LGO program’s curriculum design.

“I got to hear it from him — I was exposed to his early insights,” Cima says. “The fact that he would take the time every morning to talk to me — it was a huge influence.”

Bowen was a natural leader and set an example for others, Cima says.

“What is a leader? A leader is somebody who has the kind of infectious enthusiasm to convince others to work with them. Kent was really good at that,” Cima says. “What’s the way you learn leadership? Well, you’d look at how leaders behave. And really good leaders behave like Kent Bowen.”

MIT Sloan School of Management professor of the practice Zeynep Ton praises Bowen’s people skills and work ethic: “When you combine his belief in people with his ability to think big, something magical happens through the people Kent mentored. He always pushed us to do more,” Ton recalls. “Whenever I shared with Kent my research making an impact on a company, or my teaching making an impact on a student, his response was never just ‘good job.’ His next question was: ‘How can you make a bigger impact? Do you have the resources at MIT to do it? Who else can help you?’” 

A legacy of encouragement and drive

With this drive to do more, Bowen embodied MIT’s ethos, colleagues say.

“Kent Bowen embodies the MIT 'mens et manus' ['mind and hand'] motto professionally and personally as an inveterate experimenter in the lab, in the classroom, as an advisor, and in larger society,” says MIT Sloan senior lecturer Steve Spear. “Kent’s consistency was in creating opportunities to help people become their fullest selves, not only finding expression for their humanity greater than they could have achieved on their own, but greater than they might have even imagined on their own. An extraordinary number of people are directly in his debt because of this personal ethos — and even more have benefited from the ripple effect.”

Gregory Dibb, now a leader in the autonomous vehicle industry, is just one of them.

“Upon hearing of his passing, I immediately felt that I now have even more responsibility to step up and try to fill his shoes in sacrificing and helping others as he did — even if that means helping an unprepared and overwhelmed LGO grad student like me,” Dibb says.

Bowen is survived by his wife, Kathy Jones; his children, Natalie, Jennifer Patraiko, Melissa, Kirsten, and Jonathan; his sister, Kathlene Bowen; and six grandchildren. 

Jason Sparapani contributed to this article.

Water is essential for life on Earth. So, the liquid must be a requirement for life on other worlds. For decades, scientists’ definition of habitability on other planets has rested on this assumption.

But what makes some planets habitable might have very little to do with water. In fact, an entirely different type of liquid could conceivably support life in worlds where water can barely exist. That’s a possibility that MIT scientists raise in a study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

From lab experiments, the researchers found that a type of fluid known as an ionic liquid can readily form from chemical ingredients that are also expected to be found on the surface of some rocky planets and moons. Ionic liquids are salts that exist in liquid form below about 100 degrees Celsius. The team’s experiments showed that a mixture of sulfuric acid and certain nitrogen-containing organic compounds produced such a liquid. On rocky planets, sulfuric acid may be a byproduct of volcanic activity, while nitrogen-containing compounds have been detected on several asteroids and planets in our solar system, suggesting the compounds may be present in other planetary systems.

Ionic liquids have extremely low vapor pressure and do not evaporate; they can form and persist at higher temperatures and lower pressures than what liquid water can tolerate. The researchers note that ionic liquid can be a hospitable environment for some biomolecules, such as certain proteins that can remain stable in the fluid.

The scientists propose that, even on planets that are too warm or that have atmospheres are too low-pressure to support liquid water, there could still be pockets of ionic liquid. And where there is liquid, there may be potential for life, though likely not anything that resembles Earth’s water-based beings.

“We consider water to be required for life because that is what’s needed for Earth life. But if we look at a more general definition, we see that what we need is a liquid in which metabolism for life can take place,” says Rachana Agrawal, who led the study as a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “Now if we include ionic liquid as a possibility, this can dramatically increase the habitability zone for all rocky worlds.”

The study’s MIT co-authors are Sara Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a professor in the departments of Physics and of Aeronautics and Astronautics, along with Iaroslav Iakubivskyi, Weston Buchanan, Ana Glidden, and Jingcheng Huang. Co-authors also include Maxwell Seager of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, William Bains of Cardiff University, and Janusz Petkowski of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, in Poland.

A liquid leap

The team’s work with ionic liquid grew out of an effort to search for signs of life on Venus, where clouds of sulfuric acid envelope the planet in a noxious haze. Despite its toxicity, Venus’ clouds may contain signs of life — a notion that scientists plan to test with upcoming missions to the planet’s atmosphere.

Agrawal and Seager, who is leading the Morning Star Missions to Venus, were investigating ways to collect and evaporate sulfuric acid. If a mission collects samples from Venus’ clouds, sulfuric acid would have to be evaporated away in order to reveal any residual organic compounds that could then be analyzed for signs of life.

The researchers were using their custom, low-pressure system designed to evaporate away excess sulfuric acid, to test evaporation of a solution of the acid and an organic compound, glycine. They found that in every case, while most of the liquid sulfuric acid evaporated, a stubborn layer of liquid always remained. They soon realized that sulfuric acid was chemically reacting with glycine, resulting in an exchange of hydrogen atoms from the acid to the organic compound. The result was a fluid mixture of salts, or ions, known as an ionic liquid, that persists as a liquid across a wide range of temperatures and pressures.

This accidental finding kickstarted an idea: Could ionic liquid form on planets that are too warm and host atmospheres too thin for water to exist?

“From there, we took the leap of imagination of what this could mean,” Agrawal says. “Sulfuric acid is found on Earth from volcanoes, and organic compounds have been found on asteroids and other planetary bodies. So, this led us to wonder if ionic liquids could potentially form and exist naturally on exoplanets.”

Rocky oases

On Earth, ionic liquids are mainly synthesized for industrial purposes. They do not occur naturally, except for in one specific case, in which the liquid is generated from the mixing of venoms produced by two rival species of ants.

The team set out to investigate what conditions ionic liquid could be naturally produced in, and over what range of temperatures and pressures. In the lab, they mixed sulfuric acid with various nitrogen-containing organic compounds. In previous work, Seager’s team had found that the compounds, some of which can be considered ingredients associated with life, are surprisingly stable in sulfuric acid.

“In high school, you learn that an acid wants to donate a proton,” Seager says. “And oddly enough, we knew from our past work with sulfuric acid (the main component of Venus’ clouds) and nitrogen-containing compounds, that a nitrogen wants to receive a hydrogen. It’s like one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”

The reaction could produce a bit of ionic liquid if the sulfuric acid and nitrogen-containing organics were in a one-to-one ratio — a ratio that was not a focus of the prior work. For their new study, Seager and Agrawal mixed sulfuric acid with over 30 different nitrogen-containing organic compounds, across a range of temperatures and pressures, then observed whether ionic liquid formed when they evaporated away the sulfuric acid in various vials. They also mixed the ingredients onto basalt rocks, which are known to exist on the surface of many rocky planets.

“We were just astonished that the ionic liquid forms under so many different conditions,” Seager says. “If you put the sulfuric acid and the organic on a rock, the excess sulfuric acid seeps into the rock pores, but you’re still left with a drop of ionic liquid on the rock. Whatever we tried, ionic liquid still formed.”

The team found that the reactions produced ionic liquid at temperatures up to 180 degrees Celsius and at extremely low pressures — much lower than that of the Earth’s atmosphere. Their results suggest that ionic liquid could naturally form on other planets where liquid water cannot exist, under the right conditions.

“We’re envisioning a planet warmer than Earth, that doesn’t have water, and at some point in its past or currently, it has to have had sulfuric acid, formed from volcanic outgassing,” Seager says. “This sulfuric acid has to flow over a little pocket of organics. And organic deposits are extremely common in the solar system.”

Then, she says, the resulting pockets of liquid could stay on the planet’s surface, potentially for years or millenia, where they could theoretically serve as small oases for simple forms of ionic-liquid-based life. Going forward, Seager’s team plans to investigate further, to see what biomolecules, and ingredients for life, might survive, and thrive, in ionic liquid.

“We just opened up a Pandora’s box of new research,” Seager says. “It’s been a real journey.”

This research was supported, in part, by the Sloan Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation.

The cost of solar panels has dropped by more than 99 percent since the 1970s, enabling widespread adoption of photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity.

A new MIT study drills down on specific innovations that enabled such dramatic cost reductions, revealing that technical advances across a web of diverse research efforts and industries played a pivotal role.

The findings could help renewable energy companies make more effective R&D investment decisions and aid policymakers in identifying areas to prioritize to spur growth in manufacturing and deployment.

The researchers’ modeling approach shows that key innovations often originated outside the solar sector, including advances in semiconductor fabrication, metallurgy, glass manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, construction processes, and even legal domains.

“Our results show just how intricate the process of cost improvement is, and how much scientific and engineering advances, often at a very basic level, are at the heart of these cost reductions. A lot of knowledge was drawn from different domains and industries, and this network of knowledge is what makes these technologies improve,” says study senior author Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Trancik is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Goksin Kavlak, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now a senior energy associate at the Brattle Group; Magdalena Klemun, a former IDSS graduate student and postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University; former MIT postdoc Ajinkya Kamat; as well as Brittany Smith and Robert Margolis of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The research appears today in PLOS ONE.

Identifying innovations

This work builds on mathematical models that the researchers previously developed that tease out the effects of engineering technologies on the cost of photovoltaic (PV) modules and systems.

In this study, the researchers aimed to dig even deeper into the scientific advances that drove those cost declines.

They combined their quantitative cost model with a detailed, qualitative analysis of innovations that affected the costs of PV system materials, manufacturing steps, and deployment processes.

“Our quantitative cost model guided the qualitative analysis, allowing us to look closely at innovations in areas that are hard to measure due to a lack of quantitative data,” Kavlak says.

Building on earlier work identifying key cost drivers — such as the number of solar cells per module, wiring efficiency, and silicon wafer area — the researchers conducted a structured scan of the literature for innovations likely to affect these drivers. Next, they grouped these innovations to identify patterns, revealing clusters that reduced costs by improving materials or prefabricating components to streamline manufacturing and installation. Finally, the team tracked industry origins and timing for each innovation, and consulted domain experts to zero in on the most significant innovations.

All told, they identified 81 unique innovations that affected PV system costs since 1970, from improvements in antireflective coated glass to the implementation of fully online permitting interfaces.

“With innovations, you can always go to a deeper level, down to things like raw materials processing techniques, so it was challenging to know when to stop. Having that quantitative model to ground our qualitative analysis really helped,” Trancik says.

They chose to separate PV module costs from so-called balance-of-system (BOS) costs, which cover things like mounting systems, inverters, and wiring.

PV modules, which are wired together to form solar panels, are mass-produced and can be exported, while many BOS components are designed, built, and sold at the local level.

“By examining innovations both at the BOS level and within the modules, we identify the different types of innovations that have emerged in these two parts of PV technology,” Kavlak says.

BOS costs depend more on soft technologies, nonphysical elements such as permitting procedures, which have contributed significantly less to PV’s past cost improvement compared to hardware innovations.

“Often, it comes down to delays. Time is money, and if you have delays on construction sites and unpredictable processes, that affects these balance-of-system costs,” Trancik says.

Innovations such as automated permitting software, which flags code-compliant systems for fast-track approval, show promise. Though not yet quantified in this study, the team’s framework could support future analysis of their economic impact and similar innovations that streamline deployment processes.

Interconnected industries

The researchers found that innovations from the semiconductor, electronics, metallurgy, and petroleum industries played a major role in reducing both PV and BOS costs, but BOS costs were also impacted by innovations in software engineering and electric utilities.

Noninnovation factors, like efficiency gains from bulk purchasing and the accumulation of knowledge in the solar power industry, also reduced some cost variables.

In addition, while most PV panel innovations originated in research organizations or industry, many BOS innovations were developed by city governments, U.S. states, or professional associations.

“I knew there was a lot going on with this technology, but the diversity of all these fields and how closely linked they are, and the fact that we can clearly see that network through this analysis, was interesting,” Trancik says.

“PV was very well-positioned to absorb innovations from other industries — thanks to the right timing, physical compatibility, and supportive policies to adapt innovations for PV applications,” Klemun adds.

The analysis also reveals the role greater computing power could play in reducing BOS costs through advances like automated engineering review systems and remote site assessment software.

“In terms of knowledge spillovers, what we've seen so far in PV may really just be the beginning,” Klemun says, pointing to the expanding role of robotics and AI-driven digital tools in driving future cost reductions and quality improvements.

In addition to their qualitative analysis, the researchers demonstrated how this methodology could be used to estimate the quantitative impact of a particular innovation if one has the numerical data to plug into the cost equation.

For instance, using information about material prices and manufacturing procedures, they estimate that wire sawing, a technique which was introduced in the 1980s, led to an overall PV system cost decrease of $5 per watt by reducing silicon losses and increasing throughput during fabrication.

“Through this retrospective analysis, you learn something valuable for future strategy because you can see what worked and what didn’t work, and the models can also be applied prospectively. It is also useful to know what adjacent sectors may help support improvement in a particular technology,” Trancik says.

Moving forward, the researchers plan to apply this methodology to a wide range of technologies, including other renewable energy systems. They also want to further study soft technology to identify innovations or processes that could accelerate cost reductions.

“Although the process of technological innovation may seem like a black box, we’ve shown that you can study it just like any other phenomena,” Trancik says.

This research is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energies Technology Office.

Davi Augusto Oliveira Pinto’s career in Brazil’s foreign service took him all over the world. His work as a diplomat for more than two decades exposed him to the realities of life for all kinds of people, which informed his interest in economics and public policy. 

Oliveira Pinto is now focused on strengthening his diplomatic work through his MIT education. He completed the MITx MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), which is jointly administered by MIT Open Learning and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and then applied and was accepted to the DEDP master’s program within MIT’s Department of Economics. 

“I think governments should be able to provide data-driven, research-supported services to their constituents,” he says. “Returning to my role as a diplomat, I hope to use the tools I acquired in the DEDP program to enhance my contributions as a public servant.”

Oliveira Pinto was one of Brazil’s representatives to the World Trade Organization (WTO), helped Brazilian citizens and companies abroad, and worked to improve relationships with governments in South Africa, Argentina, Italy, Spain, and Uruguay. He observed firsthand how economic disparities could influence laws and lives. He believes in a nonpartisan approach to public service, producing and sharing policy based on peer-reviewed data and research that can help as many people as possible. 

“We need public policy informed by evidence and science, rather than by politics and ideology,” he says. “My experience at MIT reinforced my conviction that diplomacy should be used to gather people from different backgrounds and develop joint solutions to our collective challenges.”

As someone responsible for dealing with international trade issues and who understands the potential negative, far-reaching impacts of poorly researched and instituted policies, Oliveira Pinto saw MIT and its world-class economics programs as potentially world-altering tools to help him advance his work. 

Advocacy and economics

Growing up in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Oliveira Pinto learned about the country’s past of economic cycles driven by exporting commodities like minerals and coffee. He also witnessed what he described as Brazil’s “eternal state of development,” one in which broad swaths of the population suffered, and very soon became aware of the impact that issues like inflation and unemployment had on the country. 

“I thought studying economics could help solve issues I observed when growing up,” he says.

Oliveira Pinto earned an undergraduate degree in economics from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and a master’s degree in public policy from Escola Nacional de Administração Pública.

Oliveira Pinto’s personal experiences and his commitment to understanding and improving the lives of his fellow Brazilians led him to enroll in the Instituto Rio Branco, Brazil’s diplomatic academy, where he was trained in a variety of disciplines. “I was drawn to investigate inequality between countries, which led to my diplomatic career,” he says. “I worked to help Brazilian migrants abroad, promoted Brazilian companies’ exports, represented Brazil at the WTO, and helped pandemic-era assistance efforts for people in Brazil’s poor border towns.”

During the pandemic, Oliveira Pinto found himself drawn to the DEDP MicroMasters program. He was able to review foundational economics concepts, improve his ability to synthesize and interpret data, and refine his analytical skills. “My favorite course, Data Analysis for Social Scientists, reinforced the critical importance of interpreting data correctly in a world where information is increasingly abundant,” he recalls. 

The online program also offered an opportunity for him to apply to study in person. Now at MIT, Oliveira Pinto is finishing his degree with a capstone project focused on how J-PAL works with governments to support the scaling of evidence-informed policies.  

J-PAL’s research center and network have built long-term partnerships with government agencies around the world to generate evidence from randomized evaluations and incorporate the findings into policy decisions. They work closely with policymakers to inform anti-poverty programs to improve their effectiveness, an area of particular interest to the Brazilian diplomat. 

“I’m trying to understand how J-PAL’s partnerships in these places are working, any lessons we can learn from successes, challenges faced, and how we can most effectively scale the successful programs,” he says.

Inside and beyond MIT

Oliveira Pinto was welcomed into a thriving, diverse community in Cambridge, a journey that was both edifying and challenging. “My family and I found a home,” he notes, observing that many Brazilians live in the area, “and it’s sobering to see so many people from my country working hard to build their lives in the U.S.”

Oliveira Pinto says working closely with members of the MIT community was one of the DEDP master’s program’s big draws. “The ability to forge connections with students and faculty while learning from Nobel laureates and accomplished researchers and practitioners is amazing,” he says. Collaborating with people from a variety of professional, experiential, and backgrounds, he notes, was especially satisfying. 

Oliveira Pinto offered special praise for MIT’s support for his family, describing it as “particularly rewarding.” “MIT offers so many different activities for families,” he says. “My wife and three daughters benefited from the support the Institute provides.” While taking advantage of his time in the States to visit Canada and Washington, D.C., they also made the most of their time in Cambridge. The family enjoyed sailing, swimming, yoga, sports, pottery, lectures, and more while Davi pursued his studies. “The facilities are awesome,” he continues.

Assessing and quantifying impact

Oliveira Pinto’s investigations have yielded some fascinating findings. “Data can be misused,” he notes. “I learned how easily data can tell all kinds of stories, so it’s important to be careful and rigorous when assessing different claims.” He recalls how, during an econometrics class, he learned about parties on opposite sides of a health insurance divide pursuing radically different ends using the same data, each side promoting different views. 

Oliveira Pinto believes his studies have improved his abilities as a diplomat, one of the reasons he’s excited about his eventual return to the public service. “I’ll return to government service armed with the skills the DEDP program and the research conducted during my capstone project have provided,” he says. “My job as a diplomat is to seek opportunities to connect with different people, investigate carefully, and find common ground,” work for which his DEDP MicroMasters and master’s studies have helped prepare him.

Completing his capstone, Oliveira Pinto hopes to draw lessons from J-PAL’s work with governments to improve constituents' quality of life. He’s helping generate case studies that may foster future collaborations between researchers and the public sector. 

“Work like this can be a good opportunity for governments interested in a research-supported, data-driven approach to policymaking,” he says. 

There are 63 million people caring for family members with an illness or disability in the U.S. That translates to one in four adults devoting their time to helping loved ones with things like transportation, meals, prescriptions, and medical appointments.

Caregiving exacts a huge toll on the people responsible, and ianacare is seeking to lessen the burden. The company, founded by Steven Lee ’97, MEng ’98 and Jessica Kim, has built a platform that helps caregivers navigate available tools and local resources, build a network of friends and family to assist with everyday tasks, and coordinate meals, rides, and care shifts.

The name ianacare is short for “I am not alone care.” The company’s mission is to equip and empower the millions of people who perform a difficult and underappreciated role in our society.

“Family caregivers are the invisible backbone of the health care system,” Lee says. “Without them, the health care system would literally collapse, but they are still largely unrecognized. Ianacare acts as the front door for family caregivers. These caregivers are often thrust into this role untrained and unguided. But the moment they start, they have to become experts. Ianacare fills that gap.”

The company has partnered with employers and health care providers to serve more than 50,000 caregivers to date. And thanks to a partnerships with organizations like Elevance Health, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), and Medicare providers, its coordination and support tools are available to family caregivers across the country.

“Ultimately we want to make the biggest impact possible,” Lee says. “From a business standpoint, the 50,000 caregivers we’ve served is a huge number. But from the overall universe of caregivers that could use our help, it’s relatively small. We’re on a mission to help all 63 million caregivers.”

From ad tech to ianacare

As an electrical engineering and computer science student at MIT in the 1990s, Lee conducted research on early speech-recognition technology as part of the Spoken Language Systems group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Following graduation, Lee started a company with Waikit Lau ’97 that optimized video advertising placement within streams. The company has gone through several mergers and acquisitions, but is now part of the public company Magnite, which places the ads on platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+.

Lee left the company in 2016 and began advising startups through programs including MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service as he looked to work on something he would find more meaningful.

“Over the years, the MIT network has been invaluable for connecting with customers, recruiting top talent, and engaging investors,” Lee says. “So much innovation flows out of MIT, and I’ve loved giving back, especially working alongside [VMS Venture Mentor] Paul Bosco ’95 and the rest of the VMS team. It’s deeply rewarding to share the best practices I’ve learned with the next generation of innovators.”

In 2017, Lee met Kim, who was caregiving for her mother with pancreatic cancer. Hearing about her experience brought him back to his own family’s challenges caring for his grandfather with Parkinson’s disease when Lee was a child.

“We realized the gaps that existed in caregiving support three decades ago still exist,” Lee says. “Nothing has changed.”

Officially launched in 2018, ianacare may seem far-removed from speech recognition or ad technologies, but Lee sees the work as an extension of his previous experiences.

“In my mind, AI got its start in speech recognition, and the intelligence we use to surface recommendations and create care plans for family caregivers uses a lot of the same statistical modeling techniques I used in speech recognition and ad placement,” Lee says. “It all goes back to the foundation I got at MIT.”

The founders first launched a free solution that allowed caregivers to connect with friends and family members to coordinate caregiving tasks.

“In our app, you can coordinate with anyone who’s interested in helping,” Lee says. “When you share a struggle with a friend or co-worker, they always say, ‘How can I help?’ But caregivers rarely go back to them and actually ask. In our platform, you can add those people to your informal care team and ask the team for help with something instead of having to text someone directly, which you’re less likely to do.”

Next, the founders built an enterprise solution so businesses could help employee caregivers, adding features like resource directories and ways to find and select various caregiving tools.

“An immense amount of local resources are available, but nobody knows about them,” Lee says. “For instance, every county in the country has an Area Agency on Aging, but these agencies aren’t marketing experts, and caregivers don’t know where to get guidance.”

Last year, ianacare began working with AARP and health care providers participating in the nationwide GUIDE model (for “Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience”) to improve the quality of life for dementia patients and their caregivers. Through the voluntary program, participants can use ianacare’s platform to coordinate care, access educational resources, and access free respite care up to $2,500 each year.

Lee says the CMS partnership gives ianacare a pathway to reach millions of people caring for dementia patients across the country.

“This is already a crisis, and it will get worse because we have an aging population and a capacity-constraint in our health care system,” Lee says. “The population above 65 is set to double between 2000 and 2040. We aren’t going to have three times the hospitals or three times the doctors or nurse practitioners. So, we can either make clinicians more efficient or move more health care into the home. That’s why we have empower family caregivers.”

Aging with dignity

Lee recalls one family who used ianacare after their son was born with a severe disease. The child only lived eight months, but for those eight months, the parents had meals delivered to them in the hospital by friends and family.

“It was not something they had to worry about the entire time their son was alive,” Lee says. “It’s been rewarding to help these people in so much need.”

Other ianacare users say the platform has helped them keep their parents out of the hospital and lessen their depression and anxiety around caregiving.

“Nobody wants to die in a hospital, so we’ve worked hard to honor the wishes of loved ones who want to age in the home,” Lee says. “We have a lot of examples of folks who, if our support was not there, their loved one would have had to enter a nursing home or institution. Ianacare is there to ensure the home is safe and that the caregiver can manage the care burden. It’s a win-win for everybody because it’s also less costly for the health care system.”

Each year, faculty and researchers across the MIT School of Engineering are recognized with prestigious awards for their contributions to research, technology, society, and education. To celebrate these achievements, the school periodically highlights select honors received by members of its departments, labs, and centers. The following individuals were recognized in spring 2025:

Markus Buehler, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the Washington Award. The award honors engineers whose professional attainments have preeminently advanced the welfare of humankind.

Sili Deng, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, received the 2025 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. The award recognizes excellence in fundamental or applied combustion science research. Deng was honored for her work on energy conversion and storage, including combustion fundamentals, data-driven modeling of reacting flows, carbon-neutral energetic materials, and flame synthesis of materials for catalysis and energy storage.

Jonathan How, the Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award. The award recognizes the best paper published annually in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics for technical merit, originality, potential impact, clarity, and practical significance.

Richard Linares, the Rockwell International Career Development Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the 2024 American Astronautical Society Emerging Astrodynamicist Award. The award honors junior researchers making significant contributions to the field of astrodynamics.

Youssef Marzouk, the Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He was honored for influential contributions to multiple aspects of uncertainty quantification, particularly Bayesian computation and measure transport.

Dava Newman, the director of the MIT Media Lab and the Apollo Program Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the Carolyn “Bo” Aldigé Visionary Award. The award was presented in recognition of the MIT Media Lab's women’s health program, WHx, for groundbreaking research in advancing women’s health.

Martin Rinard, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received the 2025 SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award. The award recognizes his fundamental contributions in pioneering the new fields of program repair and approximate computing.

Franz-Josef Ulm, the Class of 1922 Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was named an ASCE Distinguished Member. He was recognized for contributions to the nano- and micromechanics of heterogeneous materials, including cement, concrete, rock, and bone, with applications in sustainable infrastructure, underground energy harvesting, and human health.

Enter the basement in one of MIT’s iconic buildings and you’ll find students hammering on anvils and forging red-hot metal into blades. This hands-on lesson in metallurgy is captured in the documentary “That Creative Spark,” which won an Emmy Award for the Education/Schools category at the 48th annual Boston/New England Emmy Awards Ceremony held in Boston in June.

“It’s wonderful to be recognized for the work that we do,” says Clayton Hainsworth, director of MIT Video Productions at MIT Open Learning. “We’re lucky to have incredible people who have decided to bring their outstanding talents here in order to tell MIT’s stories.”

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston/New England Chapter recently honored Hainsworth, the documentary’s executive producer; Joe McMaster, director/producer; and Wesley Richardson, cinematographer.

“That Creative Spark” spotlights a series of 2024 Independent Activities Period (IAP) classes about bladesmithing, guest-taught by Bob Kramer, a world-renowned maker of hand-forged knives. In just one week, students learned how to grind, forge, and temper blocks of steel into knives sharp enough to slice through a sheet of paper without resistance.

“It’s an incredibly physical task of making something out of metal,” says McMaster, senior producer for MIT Video Productions. He says this tangible example of hands-on learning “epitomized the MIT motto of ‘mens et manus’ [‘mind and hand’].”

The IAP Bladesmithing with Bob Kramer course allowed students to see concepts and techniques like conductivity and pattern welding in action. Abhi Ratna Sharda, a PhD student at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), still recalls the feeling of metal changing as he worked on it.

“Those are things that you can be informed about through readings and textbooks, but the actual experience of doing them leaves an intuition you’re not quick to forget,” Sharda says.

Filming in the forge — the Merton C. Flemings Materials Processing Laboratory — is not an experience the MIT Video Productions team will be quick to forget, either. Richardson, field production videographer at MIT Video Productions, held the camera just six feet away from red-hot blades being dipped into tubs of oil, creating minor fireballs and plumes of smoke.

“It’s intriguing to see the dexterity that the students have around working with their hands with very dangerous objects in close proximity to each other,” says Richardson. “Students were able to get down to these really precise knives at the end of the class.”

Some people may be surprised to learn that MIT has a working forge, but metalworking is a long tradition at the Institute. In the documentary, Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at DMSE, points out a clue hidden in plain sight: “If you look at the MIT logo, there’s a blacksmith, and ‘mens et manus’ — ‘mind and hand,’” says Chiang, referring to the Institute’s official seal, adopted in 1894. “So the teaching and the practice of working with metals has been an important part of our department for a long time.”

Chiang invited Kramer to be a guest instructor and lecturer for two reasons: Kramer is an industry expert, and he achieved success through hands-on learning — an integral part of an MIT education. After dropping out of college and joining the circus, Kramer later gained practical experience in service-industry kitchens and eventually became one of just 120 Master Bladesmiths in the United States today.

“This nontraditional journey of Bob’s inspires students to think about projects and problems in different ways,” Hainsworth says.

Sharda, for example, is applying the pattern welding process he learned from Kramer in both his PhD program and his recreational jewelry making. The effect creates striking visuals — from starbursts to swirls looking like agate geodes, and more — that extend all the way through the steel, not just the surface of the blade.

“A lot of my research has to do with bonding metals and bonding dissimilar metals, which is the foundation for pattern welding,” Sharda says, adding how this technique has many potential industrial applications. He compares it to the mokume-gane technique used with precious metals, a practice he encountered while researching solid-state welding methods.

“Seeing that executed in a space where it’s very difficult to achieve that level of precision — it inspired me to polish all the tightest nooks and crannies of the pieces I make, and make sure everything is as flawless as possible,” Sharda adds.

In the documentary, Kramer reflects on his month of teaching experience: “When you give someone the opportunity and guide them to actually make something with their hands, there’s very few things that are as satisfying as that.”

In addition to highlighting MIT’s hands-on approach to teaching, “That Creative Spark” showcases the depth of its unique learning experiences.

“There are many sides to MIT in terms of what the students are actually given access to and able to do,” says Richardson. “There is no one face of MIT, because they're highly gifted, highly talented, and often those talents and gifts extend beyond their courses of study.”

That message resonates with Chiang, who says the class underscores the importance of hands-on, experimental research in higher education.

“What I think is a real benefit in experimental research is the physical understanding of how objects and forces relate to each other,” he says. “This kind of class helps students — especially students who’ve never had that experience, never had a job that requires real hands-on work — gain an understanding of those relationships.”

Hainsworth says it’s wonderful to collaborate with his team to tell stories about the spirit and generosity of Institute faculty, guest speakers, and students. The documentary was made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of A. Neil Pappalardo ’64 and Jane Pappalardo.

“It really is a joy to come in every day and collaborate with people who care deeply about the work they do,” Hainsworth says. “And to be recognized with an Emmy, that is very rewarding.”

Jason Sparapani contributed to this story.

The various aspects of design — such as creation, function, and aesthetic — can be applied to many different disciplines and provide them with a value. While this is universally true for architecture, it has not traditionally been acknowledged for real estate, despite the close association between the two. Traditionally, real estate valuation has been determined by certain sales factors: income generated, recent similar sales, and replacement costs.

Now, a new book by researchers at MIT explores how design can be quantified in real estate valuation. “Value of Design: Creating Agency Through Data-Driven Insights” (Applied Research and Design Publishing) uses data-driven research to reveal how design leaves measurable traces in the built environment that correlate with real economic, social, and environmental outcomes.

The late MIT Research Scientist Andrea Chegut, along with Visiting Instructor Minkoo Kang SMRED ’18, Helena Rong SMArchS ’19, and Juncheng “Tony” Yang SMArchS ’19, present a body of years of interdisciplinary social science research that weave together historical context, real-world case studies, and critical reflections that engage a broader dialogue on design, value, and the built environment.

Kang, Rong, and Yang met as students at the MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab, which was co-founded and directed by Chegut, who passed away in December 2022. Under Chegut’s direction, interdisciplinary research at the lab helped establish the analytical tools and methodologies that underpin the book’s core arguments. The lab formerly closed after Chegut’s passing.

Q: How might the tools used in this research impact how an investor or real estate developer makes decisions on a property?

Kang: This book doesn’t offer a formula for replicable outcomes, nor should it. Real estate is deeply contextual, and every project carries its own constraints and potential. What our research provides is evidence: looking back at 20 years of patterns in New York City data, we see that design components — physical features such as podiums, unique non-orthogonal geometries, and high-rise setbacks; environmental qualities like daylight access, greenery, and open views; and a building’s contextual fit within its neighborhood — has a more substantial and consistent influence on value than the industry tends to credit.

Rong: One reason design has been left out of valuation practice is the siloing of architectural information: drawings stay inside individual firms, and there are no standards for identifying or quantifying the components that make up a design. We have countless databases, but never a true “design database.” This book starts to fill that gap by inventorying architectural features and showing how to measure them with both insights from architectural theory and exploration of computational methods and tools. Using today’s reality-capture technologies and the large-scale transaction data we obtained, we uncovered long-term patterns: Buildings that invested in thoughtful design often performed better, not only in financial terms, but also in how they contributed to neighborhood identity and sustained demand. The takeaway isn’t prescriptive, but directional. Design should not be treated as an aesthetic afterthought, or an intangible variable. Its impact is durable, measurable, and, importantly, undervalued, which is why it is something developers and investors should not only pay attention to, but actively prioritize.

Q: Can you share an example of how design influences urban change?

Kang: As a designer and real estate developer, my work sits at the intersection of architecture, finance, and neighborhood communities. I often collaborate with resident stakeholders to reimagine overlooked or underutilized properties as meaningful, long-term assets — using design both as a tool to shape development strategy and as a medium for community engagement and consensus building.

One recent example involved supporting a longtime property owner in transforming their single-family home into a 40-unit, mixed-income apartment building. Rather than maximizing density at all costs, the project prioritized livability, sustainability, and contextual fit — compact units with generous access to light and air, shared amenities like co-working space and a community room, and passive house-level energy performance.

Through design, we were able to unlock a new housing typology — one that balances financial feasibility with community ownership and long-term affordability. It’s a reminder that design’s influence on urban change extends beyond aesthetics or form. It helps determine who development serves, how neighborhoods evolve, and what kinds of futures are made possible.

Q: How can this research be of use to policymakers?

Yang: Policymakers usually consider broader and longer-term urban outcomes: livability, resilience, equity, and community cohesion. This research provides the empirical foundation to connect those outcomes to concrete design choices.

By quantifying how design influences not just real estate performance, but neighborhood identity, access, and sustainability, the book offers policymakers a new evidence base to inform zoning, public incentives, and regulatory frameworks. But more than that, we think this kind of data-driven insight can help align interests across the ecosystem: urban planners, private developers, community organizations, and residents, by demonstrating that high-quality design delivers shared, long-term value.

In a time when urban space is increasingly contested, being able to point to measurable impacts of design helps shift debates from ideology to informed decision-making. It gives public agencies a firmer ground to demand more, and to build coalitions around the kinds of neighborhoods we want to sustain. Basically, this research helps create agency by making design intelligible in urban spaces where key decisions are made. The kind of agency we’re interested in is not about control, but about influence and authorship. Design shapes how cities function and feel, who they serve, and how they change. Yet too often, those decisions are made without recognizing design’s role. By surfacing how design leaves durable, measurable traces in the built environment, this work gives designers and allied actors a stronger voice in shaping development and public discourse. It also invites broader participation: community groups, resident advocates, and others can use this evidence to articulate why building attributes and environmental quality matter. In this sense, the agency is distributed. It’s not just about empowering designers, but about equipping all stakeholders to see design as a shared, strategic tool for shaping more equitable, resilient, and humane urban futures.

Any motorist who has ever waited through multiple cycles for a traffic light to turn green knows how annoying signalized intersections can be. But sitting at intersections isn’t just a drag on drivers’ patience — unproductive vehicle idling could contribute as much as 15 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. land transportation.

A large-scale modeling study led by MIT researchers reveals that eco-driving measures, which can involve dynamically adjusting vehicle speeds to reduce stopping and excessive acceleration, could significantly reduce those CO2 emissions.

Using a powerful artificial intelligence method called deep reinforcement learning, the researchers conducted an in-depth impact assessment of the factors affecting vehicle emissions in three major U.S. cities.

Their analysis indicates that fully adopting eco-driving measures could cut annual city-wide intersection carbon emissions by 11 to 22 percent, without slowing traffic throughput or affecting vehicle and traffic safety.

Even if only 10 percent of vehicles on the road employ eco-driving, it would result in 25 to 50 percent of the total reduction in CO2 emissions, the researchers found.

In addition, dynamically optimizing speed limits at about 20 percent of intersections provides 70 percent of the total emission benefits. This indicates that eco-driving measures could be implemented gradually while still having measurable, positive impacts on mitigating climate change and improving public health.

“Vehicle-based control strategies like eco-driving can move the needle on climate change reduction. We’ve shown here that modern machine-learning tools, like deep reinforcement learning, can accelerate the kinds of analysis that support sociotechnical decision making. This is just the tip of the iceberg,” says senior author Cathy Wu, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) at MIT, and a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).

She is joined on the paper by lead author Vindula Jayawardana, an MIT graduate student; as well as MIT graduate students Ao Qu, Cameron Hickert, and Edgar Sanchez; MIT undergraduate Catherine Tang; Baptiste Freydt, a graduate student at ETH Zurich; and Mark Taylor and Blaine Leonard of the Utah Department of Transportation. The research appears in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.

A multi-part modeling study

Traffic control measures typically call to mind fixed infrastructure, like stop signs and traffic signals. But as vehicles become more technologically advanced, it presents an opportunity for eco-driving, which is a catch-all term for vehicle-based traffic control measures like the use of dynamic speeds to reduce energy consumption.

In the near term, eco-driving could involve speed guidance in the form of vehicle dashboards or smartphone apps. In the longer term, eco-driving could involve intelligent speed commands that directly control the acceleration of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous vehicles through vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems.

“Most prior work has focused on how to implement eco-driving. We shifted the frame to consider the question of should we implement eco-driving. If we were to deploy this technology at scale, would it make a difference?” Wu says.

To answer that question, the researchers embarked on a multifaceted modeling study that would take the better part of four years to complete.

They began by identifying 33 factors that influence vehicle emissions, including temperature, road grade, intersection topology, age of the vehicle, traffic demand, vehicle types, driver behavior, traffic signal timing, road geometry, etc.

“One of the biggest challenges was making sure we were diligent and didn’t leave out any major factors,” Wu says.

Then they used data from open street maps, U.S. geological surveys, and other sources to create digital replicas of more than 6,000 signalized intersections in three cities — Atlanta, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — and simulated more than a million traffic scenarios.

The researchers used deep reinforcement learning to optimize each scenario for eco-driving to achieve the maximum emissions benefits.

Reinforcement learning optimizes the vehicles’ driving behavior through trial-and-error interactions with a high-fidelity traffic simulator, rewarding vehicle behaviors that are more energy-efficient while penalizing those that are not.

However, training vehicle behaviors that generalize across diverse intersection traffic scenarios was a major challenge. The researchers observed that some scenarios are more similar to one another than others, such as scenarios with the same number of lanes or the same number of traffic signal phases.

As such, the researchers trained separate reinforcement learning models for different clusters of traffic scenarios, yielding better emission benefits overall.

But even with the help of AI, analyzing citywide traffic at the network level would be so computationally intensive it could take another decade to unravel, Wu says.

Instead, they broke the problem down and solved each eco-driving scenario at the individual intersection level.

“We carefully constrained the impact of eco-driving control at each intersection on neighboring intersections. In this way, we dramatically simplified the problem, which enabled us to perform this analysis at scale, without introducing unknown network effects,” she says.

Significant emissions benefits

When they analyzed the results, the researchers found that full adoption of eco-driving could result in intersection emissions reductions of between 11 and 22 percent.

These benefits differ depending on the layout of a city’s streets. A denser city like San Francisco has less room to implement eco-driving between intersections, offering a possible explanation for reduced emission savings, while Atlanta could see greater benefits given its higher speed limits.

Even if only 10 percent of vehicles employ eco-driving, a city could still realize 25 to 50 percent of the total emissions benefit because of car-following dynamics: Non-eco-driving vehicles would follow controlled eco-driving vehicles as they optimize speed to pass smoothly through intersections, reducing their carbon emissions as well.

In some cases, eco-driving could also increase vehicle throughput by minimizing emissions. However, Wu cautions that increasing throughput could result in more drivers taking to the roads, reducing emissions benefits.

And while their analysis of widely used safety metrics known as surrogate safety measures, such as time to collision, suggest that eco-driving is as safe as human driving, it could cause unexpected behavior in human drivers. More research is needed to fully understand potential safety impacts, Wu says.

Their results also show that eco-driving could provide even greater benefits when combined with alternative transportation decarbonization solutions. For instance, 20 percent eco-driving adoption in San Francisco would cut emission levels by 7 percent, but when combined with the projected adoption of hybrid and electric vehicles, it would cut emissions by 17 percent.

“This is a first attempt to systematically quantify network-wide environmental benefits of eco-driving. This is a great research effort that will serve as a key reference for others to build on in the assessment of eco-driving systems,” says Hesham Rakha, the Samuel L. Pritchard Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech, who was not involved with this research.

And while the researchers focus on carbon emissions, the benefits are highly correlated with improvements in fuel consumption, energy use, and air quality.

“This is almost a free intervention. We already have smartphones in our cars, and we are rapidly adopting cars with more advanced automation features. For something to scale quickly in practice, it must be relatively simple to implement and shovel-ready. Eco-driving fits that bill,” Wu says.

This work is funded, in part, by Amazon and the Utah Department of Transportation.

The MIT Center for International Studies announced the launch of a new pilot initiative with Angola, to be implemented through its MIT-Africa Program.

The new initiative marks a significant collaboration between MIT-Africa, Sonangol (Angola’s national energy company), and the Instituto Superior Politécnico de Tecnologias e Ciências (ISPTEC). The collaboration was formalized at a signing ceremony on MIT’s campus in June with key stakeholders from all three institutions present, including Diamantino Pedro Azevedo, the Angolan minister of mineral resources, petroleum, and gas, and Sonangol CEO Gaspar Martins.

“This partnership marks a pivotal step in the Angolan government’s commitment to leveraging knowledge as the cornerstone of the country’s economic transformation,” says Azevedo. “By connecting the oil and gas sector with science, innovation, and world-class training, we are equipping future generations to lead Angola into a more technological, sustainable, and globally competitive era.”

The sentiment is shared by the MIT-Africa Program leaders. “This initiative reflects MIT’s deep commitment to fostering meaningful, long-term relationships across the African continent,” says Mai Hassan, faculty director of the MIT-Africa Program. “It supports our mission of advancing knowledge and educating students in ways that are globally informed, and it provides a platform for mutual learning. By working with Angolan partners, we gain new perspectives and opportunities for innovation that benefit both MIT and our collaborators.”

In addition to its new collaboration with MIT-Africa, Sonangol has joined MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), breaking new ground as its first corporate member based in sub-Saharan Africa. ILP enables companies worldwide to harness MIT resources to address current challenges and to anticipate future needs. As an ILP member, Sonangol seeks to facilitate collaboration in key sectors such as natural resources and mining, energy, construction, and infrastructure.

The MIT-Africa Program manages a portfolio of research, teaching, and learning initiatives that emphasize two-way value — offering impactful experiences to MIT students and faculty while collaborating closely with institutions and communities across Africa. The new Angola collaboration is aligned with this ethos, and will launch with two core activities during the upcoming academic year:

1. Global Classroom: An MIT course on geo-spatial technologies for environmental monitoring, taught by an MIT faculty member, will be brought directly to the ISPTEC campus, offering Angolan students and MIT participants a collaborative, in-country learning experience.
2. Global Teaching Labs: MIT students will travel to ISPTEC to teach science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics subjects on renewable energy technologies, engaging Angolan students through hands-on instruction.

“This is not a traditional development project,” says Ari Jacobovits, managing director of MIT-Africa. “This is about building genuine partnerships rooted in academic rigor, innovation, and shared curiosity. The collaboration has been designed from the ground up with our partners at ISPTEC and Sonangol. We’re coming in with a readiness to learn as much as we teach.”

The pilot marks an important first step in establishing a long-term collaboration with Angola. By investing in collaborative education and innovation, the new initiative aims to spark novel approaches to global challenges and strengthen academic institutions on both sides.

These agreements with MIT-Africa and ILP “not only enhance our innovation and technological capabilities, but also create opportunities for sustainable development and operational excellence,” says Gaspar. “They advance our mission to be a leading force in the African energy sector.”

“The vision behind this initiative is bold,” says Hassan. “It’s about co-creating knowledge and building capacity that lasts.”

Four new faculty members join the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) this fall, offering the MIT community creativity, knowledge, and scholarship in multidisciplinary roles.

“These individuals add considerable strength and depth to our faculty,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. “We are excited for the academic vigor they bring to research and teaching.”

Karrie G. Karahalios ’94, MEng ’95, SM ’97, PhD ’04 joins the MIT Media Lab as a full professor of media arts and sciences. Karahalios is a pioneer in the exploration of social media and of how people communicate in environments that are increasingly mediated by algorithms that, as she has written, “shape the world around us.” Her work combines computing, systems, artificial intelligence, anthropology, sociology, psychology, game theory, design, and infrastructure studies. Karahalios’ work has received numerous honors including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, SIGMOD Best Paper Award, and recognition as an ACM Distinguished Member.

Pat Pataranutaporn SM ’18, PhD ’20 joins the MIT Media Lab as an assistant professor of media arts and sciences. A visionary technologist, scientist, and designer, Pataranutaporn explores the frontier of human-AI interaction, inventing and investigating AI systems that support human thriving. His research focuses on how personalized AI systems can amplify human cognition, from learning and decision-making to self-development, reflection, and well-being. Pataranutaporn will co-direct the Advancing Humans with AI Program.

Mariana Popescu joins the Department of Architecture as an assistant professor. Popescu is a computational architect and structural designer with a strong interest and experience in innovative ways of approaching the fabrication process and use of materials in construction. Her area of expertise is computational and parametric design, with a focus on digital fabrication and sustainable design. Her extensive involvement in projects related to promoting sustainability has led to a multilateral development of skills, which combine the fields of architecture, engineering, computational design, and digital fabrication. Popescu earned her doctorate at ETH Zurich. She was named a “Pioneer” on the MIT Technology Review global list of “35 innovators under 35” in 2019.

Holly Samuelson joins the Department of Architecture as an associate professor in the Building Technology Program at MIT, teaching architectural technology courses. Her teaching and research focus on issues of building design that impact human and environmental health. Her current projects harness advanced building simulation to investigate issues of greenhouse gas emissions, heat vulnerability, and indoor environmental quality while considering the future of buildings in a changing electricity grid. Samuelson has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed papers, winning a best paper award from the journal Energy and Building. As a recognized expert in architectural technology, she has been featured in news outlets including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the BBC, and The Wall Street Journal. Samuelson earned her doctor of design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Peter Temin PhD ’64, the MIT Elisha Gray II Professor of Economics, emeritus, passed away on Aug. 4. He was 87. 

Temin was a preeminent economic historian whose work spanned a remarkable range of topics, from the British Industrial Revolution and Roman economic history to the causes of the Great Depression and, later in his career, the decline of the American middle class. He also made important contributions to modernizing the field of economic history through his systematic use of economic theory and data analysis.

“Peter was a dedicated teacher and a wonderful colleague, who could bring economic history to life like few before or since,” says Jonathan Gruber, Ford Professor and chair of the Department of Economics. “As an undergraduate at MIT, I knew Peter as an engaging teacher and UROP [Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program] supervisor. Later, as a faculty member, I knew him as a steady and supportive colleague. A great person to talk to about everything, from research to politics to life at the Cape. Peter was the full package: a great scholar, a great teacher, and a dedicated public goods provider.”

When Temin began his career, the field of economic history was undergoing a reorientation within the profession. Led by giants like Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, economics had become a more quantitative, mathematically rigorous discipline, and economic historians responded by embracing the new tools of economic theory and data collection. This “new economic history” (today also known as “cliometrics”) revolutionized the field by introducing statistical analysis and mathematical modeling to the study of the past. Temin was a pioneer of this new approach, using econometrics to reexamine key historical events and demonstrate how data analysis could lead to the overturning of long-held assumptions.

A prolific scholar who authored 17 books and edited six, Temin made important contributions to an incredibly diverse set of topics. “As kindly as he was brilliant, Peter was a unique type of academic,” says Harvard University Professor Claudia Goldin, a fellow economic historian and winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in economic sciences. “He was a macroeconomist and an economic historian who later worked on today’s social problems. In between, he studied antitrust, health care, and the Roman economy.”

Temin’s earliest work focused on American industrial development during the 19th century and honed the signature approach that quickly made him a leading economic historian — combining rigorous economic theory with a deep understanding of historical context to reexamine the past. Temin was known for his extensive analysis of the Great Depression, which often challenged prevailing wisdom. By arguing that factors beyond monetary policy — including the gold standard and a decline in consumer spending — were critical drivers of the crisis, Temin helped recast how economists think about the catastrophe and the role of monetary policy in economic downturns.

As his career progressed, Temin’s work increasingly expanded to include the economic history of other regions and periods. His later work on the Great Depression placed a greater emphasis on the international context of the crisis, and he made significant contributions to our understanding of the drivers of the British Industrial Revolution and the nature of the Roman economy.

“Peter Temin was a giant in the field of economic history, with work touching every aspect of the field and original ideas backed by careful research,” says Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor and recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics. “He challenged the modern view of the Industrial Revolution that emphasized technological changes in a few industries, pointing instead to a broader transformation of the British economy. He took on the famous historian of the ancient world, Moses Finley, arguing that slavery notwithstanding, markets in the Roman economy — especially land markets — worked. Peter’s influence and contributions have been long-lasting and will continue to be so.”

Temin was born in Philadelphia in 1937. His parents were activists who emphasized social responsibility, and his older brother, Howard, became a geneticist and virologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine. Temin received his BA from Swarthmore College in 1959 and went on to earn his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1964. He was a junior fellow of Harvard University’s Society of Fellows from 1962 to 1965.

Temin started his career as an assistant professor of industrial history at the MIT Sloan School of Management before being hired by the Department of Economics in 1967. He served as department chair from 1990t o 1993 and held the Elisha Gray II professorship from 1993 to 2009. Temin won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001, and served as president of the Economic History Association (1995-96) and the Eastern Economic Association (2001-02).

At MIT, Temin’s scholarly achievements were matched by a deep commitment to engaging students as a teacher and advisor. “As a researcher, Peter was able to zero in on the key questions around a topic and find answers where others had been flailing,” says Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama and a former student and advisee. “As a teacher, he managed to draw sleepy students into a rousing discussion that made us think we had figured out the material on our own, when, in fact, he had been masterfully guiding us. And as a mentor, he was unfailingly supportive and generous with both his time and his vast knowledge of economic history. I feel blessed to have been one of his students.”

When he became the economics department head in 1990, Temin prioritized hiring newly-minted PhDs and other junior faculty. This foresight continues to pay dividends — his junior hires included Daron Acemoglu and Abhijit Banerjee, and he launched the recruiting of Bengt Holmström for a senior faculty position. All three went on to win Nobel Prizes and have been pillars of economics research and education at MIT.

Temin remained an active researcher and author after his retirement in 2009. Much of his later work turned toward the contemporary American economy and its deep-seated divisions. In his influential 2017 book, “The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy,” he argued that the United States had become a “dual economy,” with a prosperous finance, technology, and electronics sector on one hand and, on the other, a low-wage sector characterized by stagnant opportunity.

“There are echoes of Temin’s later writings in current department initiatives, such as the Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work” notes Gruber. “Temin was in many ways ahead of the curve in treating inequality as an issue of central importance for our discipline.”

In “The Vanishing Middle Class,” Temin also explored the role that historical events, particularly the legacy of slavery and its aftermath, played in creating and perpetuating economic divides. He further explored these themes in his last book, “Never Together: The Economic History of a Segregated America,” published in 2022. While Temin was perhaps best known for his work applying modern economic tools to the past, this later work showed that he was no less adept at the inverse: using historical analysis to shed light on modern economic problems.

Temin was active with MIT Hillel throughout his career, and outside the Institute, he enjoyed staying active. He could often be seen walking or biking to MIT, and taking a walk around Jamaica Pond was a favorite activity in his last few months of life. Peter and his late wife Charlotte were also avid travelers and art collectors. He was a wonderful husband, father, and grandfather, who was deeply devoted to his family.

Temin is lovingly remembered by his daughter Elizabeth “Liz” Temin and three grandsons, Colin and Zachary Gibbons and Elijah Mendez. He was preceded in death by his wife, Charlotte Temin, a psychologist and educator, and his daughter, Melanie Temin Mendez.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way businesses store and access their data. That’s because traditional data storage systems were designed to handle simple commands from a handful of users at once, whereas today, AI systems with millions of agents need to continuously access and process large amounts of data in parallel. Traditional data storage systems now have layers of complexity, which slows AI systems down because data must pass through multiple tiers before reaching the graphical processing units (GPUs) that are the brain cells of AI.

Cloudian, co-founded by Michael Tso ’93, SM ’93 and Hiroshi Ohta, is helping storage keep up with the AI revolution. The company has developed a scalable storage system for businesses that helps data flow seamlessly between storage and AI models. The system reduces complexity by applying parallel computing to data storage, consolidating AI functions and data onto a single parallel-processing platform that stores, retrieves, and processes scalable datasets, with direct, high-speed transfers between storage and GPUs and CPUs.

Cloudian’s integrated storage-computing platform simplifies the process of building commercial-scale AI tools and gives businesses a storage foundation that can keep up with the rise of AI.

“One of the things people miss about AI is that it’s all about the data,” Tso says. “You can’t get a 10 percent improvement in AI performance with 10 percent more data or even 10 times more data — you need 1,000 times more data. Being able to store that data in a way that’s easy to manage, and in such a way that you can embed computations into it so you can run operations while the data is coming in without moving the data — that’s where this industry is going.”

From MIT to industry

As an undergraduate at MIT in the 1990s, Tso was introduced by Professor William Dally to parallel computing — a type of computation in which many calculations occur simultaneously. Tso also worked on parallel computing with Associate Professor Greg Papadopoulos.

“It was an incredible time because most schools had one super-computing project going on — MIT had four,” Tso recalls.

As a graduate student, Tso worked with MIT senior research scientist David Clark, a computing pioneer who contributed to the internet’s early architecture, particularly the transmission control protocol (TCP) that delivers data between systems.

“As a graduate student at MIT, I worked on disconnected and intermittent networking operations for large scale distributed systems,” Tso says. “It’s funny — 30 years on, that’s what I’m still doing today.”

Following his graduation, Tso worked at Intel’s Architecture Lab, where he invented data synchronization algorithms used by Blackberry. He also created specifications for Nokia that ignited the ringtone download industry. He then joined Inktomi, a startup co-founded by Eric Brewer SM ’92, PhD ’94 that pioneered search and web content distribution technologies.

In 2001, Tso started Gemini Mobile Technologies with Joseph Norton ’93, SM ’93 and others. The company went on to build the world’s largest mobile messaging systems to handle the massive data growth from camera phones. Then, in the late 2000s, cloud computing became a powerful way for businesses to rent virtual servers as they grew their operations. Tso noticed the amount of data being collected was growing far faster than the speed of networking, so he decided to pivot the company.

“Data is being created in a lot of different places, and that data has its own gravity: It’s going to cost you money and time to move it,” Tso explains. “That means the end state is a distributed cloud that reaches out to edge devices and servers. You have to bring the cloud to the data, not the data to the cloud.”

Tso officially launched Cloudian out of Gemini Mobile Technologies in 2012, with a new emphasis on helping customers with scalable, distributed, cloud-compatible data storage.

“What we didn’t see when we first started the company was that AI was going to be the ultimate use case for data on the edge,” Tso says.

Although Tso’s research at MIT began more than two decades ago, he sees strong connections between what he worked on and the industry today.

“It’s like my whole life is playing back because David Clark and I were dealing with disconnected and intermittently connected networks, which are part of every edge use case today, and Professor Dally was working on very fast, scalable interconnects,” Tso says, noting that Dally is now the senior vice president and chief scientist at the leading AI company NVIDIA. “Now, when you look at the modern NVIDIA chip architecture and the way they do interchip communication, it’s got Dally’s work all over it. With Professor Papadopoulos, I worked on accelerate application software with parallel computing hardware without having to rewrite the applications, and that’s exactly the problem we are trying to solve with NVIDIA. Coincidentally, all the stuff I was doing at MIT is playing out.”

Today Cloudian’s platform uses an object storage architecture in which all kinds of data —documents, videos, sensor data — are stored as a unique object with metadata. Object storage can manage massive datasets in a flat file stucture, making it ideal for unstructured data and AI systems, but it traditionally hasn’t been able to send data directly to AI models without the data first being copied into a computer’s memory system, creating latency and energy bottlenecks for businesses.

In July, Cloudian announced that it has extended its object storage system with a vector database that stores data in a form which is immediately usable by AI models. As the data are ingested, Cloudian is computing in real-time the vector form of that data to power AI tools like recommender engines, search, and AI assistants. Cloudian also announced a partnership with NVIDIA that allows its storage system to work directly with the AI company’s GPUs. Cloudian says the new system enables even faster AI operations and reduces computing costs.

“NVIDIA contacted us about a year and a half ago because GPUs are useful only with data that keeps them busy,” Tso says. “Now that people are realizing it’s easier to move the AI to the data than it is to move huge datasets. Our storage systems embed a lot of AI functions, so we’re able to pre- and post-process data for AI near where we collect and store the data.”

AI-first storage

Cloudian is helping about 1,000 companies around the world get more value out of their data, including large manufacturers, financial service providers, health care organizations, and government agencies.

Cloudian’s storage platform is helping one large automaker, for instance, use AI to determine when each of its manufacturing robots need to be serviced. Cloudian is also working with the National Library of Medicine to store research articles and patents, and the National Cancer Database to store DNA sequences of tumors — rich datasets that AI models could process to help research develop new treatments or gain new insights.

“GPUs have been an incredible enabler,” Tso says. “Moore’s Law doubles the amount of compute every two years, but GPUs are able to parallelize operations on chips, so you can network GPUs together and shatter Moore’s Law. That scale is pushing AI to new levels of intelligence, but the only way to make GPUs work hard is to feed them data at the same speed that they compute — and the only way to do that is to get rid of all the layers between them and your data.”

If you’ve urgently ordered a package from Amazon — and exhaled when it arrived on your doorstep hours later — you likely have three graduates of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program to thank: John Tagawa SM ’99; Diego Méndez de la Luz MNG ’04, MBA ’11, SM ’11; or Chuck Cummings MBA ’11, SM ’11.

Each holds critical roles within the company. Tagawa oversees Amazon’s North American operations. Méndez de la Luz heads up operations in Mexico. Cummings leads customer fulfillment throughout Canada. They also mentor LGO students and recent graduates throughout the organization and credit LGO’s singular blend of operational and leadership strength for their success as Amazon grows.

John Tagawa

Tagawa came to Amazon — now the world’s largest online retailer — through an LGO alumni connection in 2008, joining the organization during rapid expansion. He led fulfillment centers on the West Coast and went on to oversee operations in India, South America, and in Europe, with a focus on safety, speed, and efficiency.

Today, he’s a resource for other LGO graduates at Amazon, applauding the program’s uniquely multidimensional focus on tech, engineering, and leadership, all of which are key pillars as the organization continues to grow.

“Today, we have hundreds of fulfillment centers worldwide, and Amazon has grown its transportation and last-mile delivery network in an effort to ensure greater resilience and speed in getting products to customers,” he explains.

Tagawa says that LGO’s unique dual-degree program provided a singular blueprint for success as an operations leader and an engineer.

“The technology and engineering education that I received at MIT plays directly into my day-to-day role. We’re constantly thinking about how to infuse technology and innovate at scale to improve outcomes for our employees and customers. That ranges from introducing robotics to our fulfillment centers to using AI to determine how much inventory we should buy and where we should place it to introducing technology on the shop floor to help our frontline leaders. Those components of my LGO education were critical,” he says. 

After receiving his undergraduate degree at the University of Washington, Tagawa pursued engineering and operations roles. But it wasn’t until LGO that he realized how important the fusion of business, operations, and leadership competencies was.

“What drew me to LGO was being able to study business and finance, coupled with an engineering and leadership education. I hadn’t realized how powerful bringing all three of those disciplines together could be,” he reflects. “Amazon’s efficacy relies on how great our leaders are, and a big part of my role is to develop, coach, and build a great leadership team. The foundation of my ability to do that is based on what I learned at MIT about becoming a lifelong learner.”

Tagawa recalls his own classes with Donald Davis, the late chair and CEO of The Stanley Works. Davis was one of LGO’s first lecturers, sharing case studies from his time on the front lines. Davis imparted the concepts of servant-leadership and diversity, which shaped Tagawa’s outlook at Amazon.

“I get energized by the leadership principles at Amazon. We strive to be Earth's best employer​​ and being customer-obsessed. It’s energizing to lead large-scale organizations whose sole mission is to improve the lives of our employees and customers, with a strong focus on developing great leaders. Who could ask for something better than that?” he asks.

Diego Méndez de la Luz

This blend of leadership acumen and engineering dynamism also jump-started the career of Méndez de la Luz, now Amazon’s country director of Mexico operations. LGO’s leadership focus was crucial in preparing him for his Amazon role, where he oversees the vast majority of Amazon’s 10,000 employees in Mexico — those who work in operations — across 40 facilities throughout his home country.

At MIT, he took classes with notable professors, whom he credits with broadening his intellectual and professional horizons. 

“I was a good student throughout my education, but only after joining LGO did I learn what I consider to be foundational concepts and skills,” says Méndez de la Luz, who also started his career in engineering. “I learned about inventory management, business law, accounting, and about how to have important conversations in the workplace — things I never learned as an engineer. LGO was tremendously useful.”

Méndez de la Luz joined Amazon shortly after LGO, working his way up from frontline management roles at fulfillment centers throughout the United States. Today, he oversees the end-to-end network of imports, fulfillment, transportation, and customer delivery.

At Amazon, he believes he’s making a real difference in his native country. With Amazon’s scale comes the responsibility to improve both the planet and local communities, he says. Amazon engages with communities through volunteer programs, literacy efforts, and partnerships with shelters.

Today, Méndez de la Luz says that he’s working in his “dream job — exactly what I went to MIT for,” in a community he loves.

“My role at Amazon is a great source of pride. When I was growing up, I wanted to be the president of Mexico. I still want to make a difference for people in our society. Here, I have the ability to come back to my home country to create good jobs. Having the ability to do that has been a surprise to me — but a very positive development that I just value so much,” he says. “I want people to feel excited that they’re going to come to work and see their friends and colleagues do well.”

Chuck Cummings

This collaborative atmosphere propelled Cummings to pursue a post-MIT career at Amazon after years as a mechanical engineer. He discovered a hospitable workplace that valued growth: He began as an operations management intern, and today he leads the customer fulfillment business in Canada, which includes the country’s fulfillment centers. It’s a big job made better by his LGO expertise, where he always strives for co-worker and customer satisfaction.

“I sought out LGO because I’ve always loved the shop floor,” he says. “I continue to get excited about: How do we offer faster speeds to Canadian customers? How do we keep lowering our cost structure so that we can continue to invest and offer new benefits for our customers? At the same time, how do I build the absolute best working environment for all of my employees?”

Last year, Cummings’ team launched an Amazon robotics fulfillment center in Calgary, Alberta. This was a significant enhancement for Canadian customers; now, Calgary shoppers have more inventory much closer to home, with delivery speeds to match. Cummings also helped to bring Amazon’s storage and distribution network to a new facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, which will enable nearby fulfillment centers to respond to a wider selection of customer orders at the fastest-possible delivery speeds.

These were substantial endeavors, which he felt comfortable undertaking thanks to his classes at MIT. His experience was so meaningful that Cummings now serves as Amazon’s co-school captain for LGO, where he recruits the next generation of LGO graduates for internships and full-time roles. Cummings has now worked with more than 25 LGO graduates, and he says they’re easy to pick out of a crowd.

“You can give them very ambiguous, complex problems, and they can dive into the data and come out with an amazing solution. But what makes LGO students even more special is, at the same time, they have strong communication skills. They have a lot of emotional intelligence. It’s a combination of business leadership with extreme technical understanding,” he says.

Both Tagawa and Méndez de la Luz interact frequently with LGO students, too. They agree that, while Amazon’s technology is always unfolding, its leadership qualities remain constant — and match perfectly with LGO’s reputation for creating dynamic, empathetic professionals who also prize technical skill.

“Whereas technology has grown and changed by leaps and bounds, leadership principles carry on for decades,” Tagawa says. “The infusion of the engineering, business, and leadership components at LGO are second to none.”

A new strategy for strengthening polymer materials could lead to more durable plastics and cut down on plastic waste, according to researchers at MIT and Duke University.

Using machine learning, the researchers identified crosslinker molecules that can be added to polymer materials, allowing them to withstand more force before tearing. These crosslinkers belong to a class of molecules known as mechanophores, which change their shape or other properties in response to mechanical force.

“These molecules can be useful for making polymers that would be stronger in response to force. You apply some stress to them, and rather than cracking or breaking, you instead see something that has higher resilience,” says Heather Kulik, the Lammot du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, who is also a professor of chemistry and the senior author of the study.

The crosslinkers that the researchers identified in this study are iron-containing compounds known as ferrocenes, which until now had not been broadly explored for their potential as mechanophores. Experimentally evaluating a single mechanophore can take weeks, but the researchers showed that they could use a machine-learning model to dramatically speed up this process.

MIT postdoc Ilia Kevlishvili is the lead author of the open-access paper, which appeared Friday in ACS Central Science. Other authors include Jafer Vakil, a Duke graduate student; David Kastner and Xiao Huang, both MIT graduate students; and Stephen Craig, a professor of chemistry at Duke.

The weakest link

Mechanophores are molecules that respond to force in unique ways, typically by changing their color, structure, or other properties. In the new study, the MIT and Duke team wanted to investigate whether they could be used to help make polymers more resilient to damage.

The new work builds on a 2023 study from Craig and Jeremiah Johnson, the A. Thomas Guertin Professor of Chemistry at MIT, and their colleagues. In that work, the researchers found that, surprisingly, incorporating weak crosslinkers into a polymer network can make the overall material stronger. When materials with these weak crosslinkers are stretched to the breaking point, any cracks propagating through the material try to avoid the stronger bonds and go through the weaker bonds instead. This means the crack has to break more bonds than it would if all of the bonds were the same strength.

To find new ways to exploit that phenomenon, Craig and Kulik joined forces to try to identify mechanophores that could be used as weak crosslinkers.

“We had this new mechanistic insight and opportunity, but it came with a big challenge: Of all possible compositions of matter, how do we zero in on the ones with the greatest potential?” Craig says. “Full credit to Heather and Ilia for both identifying this challenge and devising an approach to meet it.”

Discovering and characterizing mechanophores is a difficult task that requires either time-consuming experiments or computationally intense simulations of molecular interactions. Most of the known mechanophores are organic compounds, such as cyclobutane, which was used as a crosslinker in the 2023 study.

In the new study, the researchers wanted to focus on molecules known as ferrocenes, which are believed to hold potential as mechanophores. Ferrocenes are organometallic compounds that have an iron atom sandwiched between two carbon-containing rings. Those rings can have different chemical groups added to them, which alter their chemical and mechanical properties.

Many ferrocenes are used as pharmaceuticals or catalysts, and a handful are known to be good mechanophores, but most have not been evaluated for that use. Experimental tests on a single potential mechanophore can take several weeks, and computational simulations, while faster, still take a couple of days. Evaluating thousands of candidates using these strategies is a daunting task.

Realizing that a machine-learning approach could dramatically speed up the characterization of these molecules, the MIT and Duke team decided to use a neural network to identify ferrocenes that could be promising mechanophores.

They began with information from a database known as the Cambridge Structural Database, which contains the structures of 5,000 different ferrocenes that have already been synthesized.

“We knew that we didn’t have to worry about the question of synthesizability, at least from the perspective of the mechanophore itself. This allowed us to pick a really large space to explore with a lot of chemical diversity, that also would be synthetically realizable,” Kevlishvili says.

First, the researchers performed computational simulations for about 400 of these compounds, allowing them to calculate how much force is necessary to pull atoms apart within each molecule. For this application, they were looking for molecules that would break apart quickly, as these weak links could make polymer materials more resistant to tearing.

Then they used this data, along with information on the structure of each compound, to train a machine-learning model. This model was able to predict the force needed to activate the mechanophore, which in turn influences resistance to tearing, for the remaining 4,500 compounds in the database, plus an additional 7,000 compounds that are similar to those in the database but have some atoms rearranged.

The researchers discovered two main features that seemed likely to increase tear resistance. One was interactions between the chemical groups that are attached to the ferrocene rings. Additionally, the presence of large, bulky molecules attached to both rings of the ferrocene made the molecule more likely to break apart in response to applied forces.

While the first of these features was not surprising, the second trait was not something a chemist would have predicted beforehand, and could not have been detected without AI, the researchers say. “This was something truly surprising,” Kulik says.

Tougher plastics

Once the researchers identified about 100 promising candidates, Craig’s lab at Duke synthesized a polymer material incorporating one of them, known as m-TMS-Fc. Within the material, m-TMS-Fc acts as a crosslinker, connecting the polymer strands that make up polyacrylate, a type of plastic.

By applying force to each polymer until it tore, the researchers found that the weak m-TMS-Fc linker produced a strong, tear-resistant polymer. This polymer turned out to be about four times tougher than polymers made with standard ferrocene as the crosslinker.

“That really has big implications because if we think of all the plastics that we use and all the plastic waste accumulation, if you make materials tougher, that means their lifetime will be longer. They will be usable for a longer period of time, which could reduce plastic production in the long term,” Kevlishvili says.

The researchers now hope to use their machine-learning approach to identify mechanophores with other desirable properties, such as the ability to change color or become catalytically active in response to force. Such materials could be used as stress sensors or switchable catalysts, and they could also be useful for biomedical applications such as drug delivery.

In those studies, the researchers plan to focus on ferrocenes and other metal-containing mechanophores that have already been synthesized but whose properties are not fully understood.

“Transition metal mechanophores are relatively underexplored, and they’re probably a little bit more challenging to make,” Kulik says. “This computational workflow can be broadly used to enlarge the space of mechanophores that people have studied.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation Center for the Chemistry of Molecularly Optimized Networks (MONET).