As a college student, Kevin Power never considered working in supply chain management; in fact, he didn’t know it was an option. He earned an undergraduate degree in manufacturing engineering while working full time at an oil refinery, which demanded a rigorous routine of shift work, long days, and evening classes.

After graduation, he found himself searching for new learning opportunities, and stumbled upon the online courses of the MITx MicroMasters Program in Supply Chain Management, an online program of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Starting with Supply Chain Analytics (SC0x), Power was drawn in immediately by how directly applicable the lessons were to real work. 

“So many courses that you do are more theoretical,” he reflects. “Everything I learned, I could apply it directly to my work and see the value in doing it. So as soon as I finished Supply Chain Analytics, I decided, OK, I’ll finish the whole program.” What he didn’t yet know was that he belonged to the very audience the MicroMasters was designed for — lifelong learners. Learners are often working professionals who want deep, flexible training while continuing their careers.

After completing the five-course MicroMasters track and earning his credential, Power uncovered another opportunity: the MIT SCM Blended Master’s Program, which pairs the online credential with a one-semester, on-campus program, resulting in a master of applied science degree in supply chain management.

For Power, the blend of online and in-person learning proved pivotal. He describes his MicroMasters experience as fertile ground for deep, self-paced study. “I’m a very introverted kind of learner, so I prefer to just learn out of a textbook and online,” he says. But, once in the MIT SCM program, he tapped into the soft skills he needs to stand out in the industry. “When I came to campus, it was more about networking and being able to communicate with executives, on top of our academic work,” he says. The immersive environment of combining scholarly rigor with real-world experience among peers across the supply chain industry is at the heart of what the blended program aims to facilitate.

During his time on campus, Power’s research included simulation modeling in port shipping and generative-AI–driven projects focused on supply chain resilience. “I had never done simulation modeling before, and right now it’s huge in the industry,” he says. “If I were trying to apply for a simulation modeling job, I’m sure it would help me greatly having done this.” 

His project, completed with fellow MIT SCM student Yassine Lahlou-Kamal, was one of the winners at the 2025 Annual MIT Global SCALE Network Supply Chain Student Research Expo, in which students showcased their industry-sponsored thesis and capstone projects. This experience pays off in his current work with Elenna Dugundji in her Deep Knowledge Lab for Supply Chain and Logistics.

Beyond academics and research, Power threw himself into the fast-paced world of hackathons, despite having never participated in one before. “I’m very competitive,” Power confesses, “and I feel like I learn something new every time.” His first effort, an internal MIT competition called Hack-Nation’s Global AI Hackathon, earned him a win with an AI sports-betting agent project that fuses model-driven analysis with web scraping. Soon after, he tackled the OpenAI Red Teaming Challenge on Kaggle. Despite joining the competition halfway through the 15-day window, he raced through the final week and was selected as one of the winners. “It gave me a lot of confidence … that the things I’m working on right now are cutting-edge, even in the eyes of OpenAI.”

In terms of his return on investment in the degree, Power says, “I’m getting so much value out of being here. Even from just doing the Kaggle competition, I won more than the cost of my full MIT degree.” Long-term, Power has been impressed that “as far as I know, everybody that was looking for a job in the supply chain program has one.” The data back him up, as every student from the MIT SCM residential program Class of 2025 secured a job within six months of graduation.

Now a current master’s student in the MIT Technology and Policy Program, looking ahead, Power says, “I want to do a startup. A lot of the ideas came from research I’ve done here.” 

Reflecting on the transformation he’s experienced in just 10 months of the program, he calls it “crazy.” “The SCM program really is amazing … I’d recommend it to anyone.”

Born and raised in Japan as part of a military family, Christine Pilcavage knows first-hand about the value of an immersive approach to exploration. 

“Any experience in a different context improves an individual,” says Pilcavage, who has also lived in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Kenya. 

It’s that ethos that Pilcavage brings to her role as managing director of MISTI Japan, which connects MIT students and faculty to Institute collaborators in Japan. In her role, Pilcavage sends students to Japan for internship and research opportunities. She also shares Japanese culture on campus with activities like Ikebana classes during Independent Activities Period and a Japanese Film Festival.

MIT’s connection to Japan dates back before 1874, when its first Japanese student graduated. Later, 1911 saw the foundation of the MIT Association of Japan, Japan’s first MIT trans-Pacific alumni club. That organization later evolved into the MIT Club of Japan. 

MISTI Japan predates the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI)’s creation. The MIT-Japan Program was established in 1981 to prepare MIT students to be better scientists and engineers who understand and work effectively with Japan. The program sought to foster a deeper U.S.-Japan collaboration in science and technology amidst Japan's growing economic and technological power. MIT-Japan began sending students to Japan in 1983. 

Students in the MIT-Japan Program complete a three-to-12-month internship at their host institution, and the immersive experiences are invaluable. “Japan is so different from the Western world,” Pilcavage notes. “For example, in Japanese, verbs end sentences, so it’s important to develop patience and listen carefully when communicating.”

Pilcavage believes there is tremendous value in creating and supporting a program like MISTI at MIT. Traveling to areas outside the Institute and the United States can expose students to diverse cultures, aid the exploration of challenges, help them discover solutions, improve language learning, and foster communication. 

“We want our students to think and create,” she says. “They need to see beyond the MIT bubble and think carefully about how to solve difficult problems and help others.”

Japan, Pilcavage continues, is monocultural in ways the United States isn’t. While English is spoken in larger cities, it’s harder to find it spoken in rural areas. “MIT students teach STEM topics to rural Japanese kids in Japanese,” Pilcavage says, citing a program that’s been teaching STEAM workshops in the tsunami-affected area in Northern Japan since 2017. “Learning to code switch means they improve their language skills while also learning important cultural nuances, like body language.”

Pilcavage emphasizes the importance of “learning differently” for MIT students and the Japanese people with whom they interact. “I wanted our students to engage with the local population,” she says, encouraging them to develop what she calls “cultural resilience.”

Journey to MIT

Pilcavage — whose educational background includes master’s degrees in international affairs and public health, and undergraduate study in economics and psychology — has also worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Japanese government, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the World Health Organization on global health and educational issues in Africa and Asia. 

Pilcavage first came to Cambridge, Massachusetts, looking for hands-on experience in public health and community outcomes in a role with Management Sciences for Health, co-founded by MIT Sloan School of Management alumnus Ron O’Connor SM ’71. There, she investigated reproductive and women’s health and supported a Japanese nonprofit affiliated with the organization.

She has since developed strong ties to Cambridge and MIT. “I was married in the MIT Chapel to an MIT alum, and our reception was held in Walker Memorial,” she says. “I was a migratory bird who landed on a tree, and my husband is the tree that has deep local roots here.” 

In keeping with her ethos of overcoming roadblocks to success, Pilcavage encourages students to challenge themselves. “I’ve tried to model that behavior throughout my career,” she says.

Following her arrival at MIT In 2013, Pilcavage worked with the Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (CITE), an MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning project established in 2012 to develop new methods for product evaluation in global development. Formerly funded by USAID, Pilcavage administered the $10 million research program, which sought to learn which low-cost interventions worked best by evaluating products designed for people living in lower-income communities. 

“It’s important to learn how to manage real-world challenges and deal with them effectively,” she argues. “Creating a collaborative environment in which people can discover solutions is how things get done.”

A career of service

Pilcavage has been recognized for her outstanding contributions to encouraging positive relations between America and Japan. She received the Foreign Minister's Commendation from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the John E. Thayer III Award from the Japan Society of Boston.

“I’m honored to join a community of people who have dedicated their lives to strengthening ties between the U.S. and Japan,” Pilcavage says when asked about the awards. “It’s exciting and humbling to be recognized for doing something I love.” 

“Chris is a determined, empathetic leader who inspires our students and is committed to advancing both MIT’s mission and U.S.-Japan relations,” says Richard Samuels, the Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT, and founder and faculty director of MISTI Japan. “I can think of no one more deserving of these awards.”

Pilcavage is excited about new MISTI Japan initiatives that are in development or already underway. “We’re launching our first global classroom with [MIT historian] Hiromu Nagahara and [lecturer in Japanese] Takako Aikawa,” she notes. “Students will visit cities like Kyoto and Hiroshima, and explore Japanese history and culture up close.”

Additionally, Pilcavage is developing social impact workshops and consistently questioning how to improve MIT Japan’s work and its impact. She’s always looking for new projects and new ways to engage and encourage students. “How can I make the program better?” she asks when considering MISTI Japan and its value to MIT and its students. 

“I tell people I have the best job in the world,” she says. “I get to share my culture with the MIT community and work with the best colleagues who are nurturing and supportive. I believe I’ve found my home here.”

EFF last summer asked a federal judge to block the federal government from using Medicaid data to identify and deport immigrants.  

We also warned about the danger of the Trump administration consolidating all of the government’s information into a single searchable, AI-driven interface with help from Palantir, a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights. 

Now we have the first evidence that our concerns have become reality. 

“Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address,” 404 Media reports today. “ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.” 

The tool – dubbed Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, 404 Media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents, among other sources. 

This revelation comes as ICE – which has gone on a surveillance technology shopping spree – floods Minneapolis with agents, violently running roughshod over the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike; President Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy military troops against protestors there. Other localities are preparing for the possibility of similar surges. 

Different government agencies necessarily collect information to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger comes when the government begins pooling that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose it was collected.

This kind of consolidation of government records provides enormous government power that can be abused. Different government agencies necessarily collect information to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger comes when the government begins pooling that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose it was collected. 

As EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn wrote in a Mercury News op-ed last August, “While couched in the benign language of eliminating government ‘data silos,’ this plan runs roughshod over your privacy and security. It’s a throwback to the rightly mocked ‘Total Information Awareness’ plans of the early 2000s that were, at least publicly, stopped after massive outcry from the public and from key members of Congress. It’s time to cry out again.” 

In addition to the amicus brief we co-authored challenging ICE’s grab for Medicaid data, EFF has successfully sued over DOGE agents grabbing personal data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, filed an amicus brief in a suit challenging ICE’s grab for taxpayer data, and sued the departments of State and Homeland Security to halt a mass surveillance program to monitor constitutionally protected speech by noncitizens lawfully present in the U.S. 

But litigation isn’t enough. People need to keep raising concerns via public discourse and Congress should act immediately to put brakes on this runaway train that threatens to crush the privacy and security of each and every person in America.  

Quantum computers could rapidly solve complex problems that would take the most powerful classical supercomputers decades to unravel. But they’ll need to be large and stable enough to efficiently perform operations. To meet this challenge, researchers at MIT and elsewhere are developing trapped-ion quantum computers based on ultra-compact photonic chips. These chip-based systems offer a scalable alternative to existing trapped-ion quantum computers, which rely on bulky optical equipment.

The ions in these quantum computers must be cooled to extremely cold temperatures to minimize vibrations and prevent errors. So far, such trapped-ion systems based on photonic chips have been limited to inefficient and slow cooling methods.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory has implemented a much faster and more energy-efficient method for cooling trapped ions using photonic chips. Their approach achieved cooling to about 10 times below the limit of standard laser cooling.

Key to this technique is a photonic chip that incorporates precisely designed antennas to manipulate beams of tightly focused, intersecting light.

The researchers’ initial demonstration takes a key step toward scalable chip-based architectures that could someday enable quantum computing systems with greater efficiency and stability.

“We were able to design polarization-diverse integrated-photonics devices, utilize them to develop a variety of novel integrated-photonics-based systems, and apply them to show very efficient ion cooling. However, this is just the beginning of what we can do using these devices. By introducing polarization diversity to integrated-photonics-based trapped-ion systems, this work opens the door to a variety of advanced operations for trapped ions that weren’t previously attainable, even beyond efficient ion cooling — all research directions we are excited to explore in the future,” says Jelena Notaros, the Robert J. Shillman Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT, a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and senior author of a paper on this architecture.

She is joined on the paper by lead authors Sabrina Corsetti, an EECS graduate student; Ethan Clements, a former postdoc who is now a staff scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory; Felix Knollmann, a graduate student in the Department of Physics; John Chiaverini, senior member of the technical staff at Lincoln Laboratory and a principal investigator in MIT’s Center for Quantum Engineering; as well as others at Lincoln Laboratory and MIT. The research appears today in two joint publications in Light: Science and Applications and Physical Review Letters.

Seeking scalability

While there are many types of quantum systems, this research is focused on trapped-ion quantum computing. In this application, a charged particle called an ion is formed by peeling an electron from an atom, and then trapped using radio-frequency signals and manipulated using optical signals.

Researchers use lasers to encode information in the trapped ion by changing its state. In this way, the ion can be used as a quantum bit, or qubit. Qubits are the building blocks of a quantum computer.

To prevent collisions between ions and gas molecules in the air, the ions are held in vacuum, often created with a device known as a cryostat. Traditionally, bulky lasers sit outside the cryostat and shoot different light beams through the cryostat’s windows toward the chip. These systems require a room full of optical components to address just a few dozen ions, making it difficult to scale to the large numbers of ions needed for advanced quantum computing. Slight vibrations outside the cryostat can also disrupt the light beams, ultimately reducing the accuracy of the quantum computer.

To get around these challenges, MIT researchers have been developing integrated-photonics-based systems. In this case, the light is emitted from the same chip that traps the ion. This improves scalability by eliminating the need for external optical components.

“Now, we can envision having thousands of sites on a single chip that all interface up to many ions, all working together in a scalable way,” Knollmann says.

But integrated-photonics-based demonstrations to date have achieved limited cooling efficiencies.

Keeping their cool

To enable fast and accurate quantum operations, researchers use optical fields to reduce the kinetic energy of the trapped ion. This causes the ion to cool to nearly absolute zero, an effective temperature even colder than cryostats can achieve.

But common methods have a higher cooling floor, so the ion still has a lot of vibrational energy after the cooling process completes. This would make it hard to use the qubits for high-quality computations.

The MIT researchers utilized a more complex approach, known as polarization-gradient cooling, which involves the precise interaction of two beams of light.

Each light beam has a different polarization, which means the field in each beam is oscillating in a different direction (up and down, side to side, etc.). Where these beams intersect, they form a rotating vortex of light that can force the ion to stop vibrating even more efficiently.

Although this approach had been shown previously using bulk optics, it hadn’t been shown before using integrated photonics.

To enable this more complex interaction, the researchers designed a chip with two nanoscale antennas, which emit beams of light out of the chip to manipulate the ion above it.

These antennas are connected by waveguides that route light to the antennas. The waveguides are designed to stabilize the optical routing, which improves the stability of the vortex pattern generated by the beams.

“When we emit light from integrated antennas, it behaves differently than with bulk optics. The beams, and generated light patterns, become extremely stable. Having these stable patterns allows us to explore ion behaviors with significantly more control,” Clements says.

The researchers also designed the antennas to maximize the amount of light that reaches the ion. Each antenna has tiny curved notches that scatter light upward, spaced just right to direct light toward the ion.

“We built upon many years of development at Lincoln Laboratory to design these gratings to emit diverse polarizations of light,” Corsetti says.

They experimented with several architectures, characterizing each to better understand how it emitted light.

With their final design in place, the researchers demonstrated ion cooling that was nearly 10 times below the limit of standard laser cooling, referred to as the Doppler limit. Their chip was able to reach this limit in about 100 microseconds, several times faster than other techniques.

“The demonstration of enhanced performance using optics integrated in the ion-trap chip lays the foundation for further integration that can allow new approaches for quantum-state manipulation, and that could improve the prospects for practical quantum-information processing,” adds Chiaverini. “Key to achieving this advance was the cross-Institute collaboration between the MIT campus and Lincoln groups, a model that we can build on as we take these next steps.”

In the future, the team plans to conduct characterization experiments on different chip architectures and demonstrate polarization-gradient cooling with multiple ions. In addition, they hope to explore other applications that could benefit from the stable light beams they can generate with this architecture.

Other authors who contributed to this research are Ashton Hattori (MIT), Zhaoyi Li (MIT), Milica Notaros (MIT), Reuel Swint (Lincoln Laboratory), Tal Sneh (MIT), Patrick Callahan (Lincoln Laboratory), May Kim (Lincoln Laboratory), Aaron Leu (MIT), Gavin West (MIT), Dave Kharas (Lincoln Laboratory), Thomas Mahony (Lincoln Laboratory), Colin Bruzewicz (Lincoln Laboratory), Cheryl Sorace-Agaskar (Lincoln Laboratory), Robert McConnell (Lincoln Laboratory), and Isaac Chuang (MIT).

This work is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the MIT Center for Quantum Engineering, the U.S. Department of Defense, an MIT Rolf G. Locher Endowed Fellowship, and an MIT Frederick and Barbara Cronin Fellowship.

This isn’t good:

We discovered a critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-21858, CVSS 10.0) in n8n that enables attackers to take over locally deployed instances, impacting an estimated 100,000 servers globally. No official workarounds are available for this vulnerability. Users should upgrade to version 1.121.0 or later to remediate the vulnerability.

Three technical links and two news links.

Electricity prices and data centers are emerging as major issues for both voters and legislators.

The move by about a dozen senators came as President Donald Trump threatens to reduce the agency's role in disaster recovery.

A proposal for sharper reductions in greenhouse gas emissions "will spur long-term investment" in solar panels, electric vehicles and other technologies.

The federal judge said he would rule soon on whether the wind project off the coast of New York can restart construction.

California Sen. Adam Schiff is leading a bipartisan effort to improve emergency services for older adults and disabled people, after many were killed in last year's Los Angeles fires.

Ancient ice could hold vital information for future scientists, but it is melting fast.

Populist groups are pushing back against environmental initiatives, spurred in part by President Donald Trump’s anti-green agenda.

The use of inadequate models has left banks, insurers and asset managers accepting a “chance of failure” that is a “hundred times greater than the chance we accept of insurance company failure,” said a researcher.

An official said the nation is working with the International Finance Corp. to help unlock private capital and relieve strain on public finances.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02533-5

Oceans provide essential ecosystem services to human society, yet the climate impacts on blue capital have long been ignored. Incorporating the latest works on ocean science and economics, researchers show that accounting for the potential damage would almost double the social cost of carbon estimation.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02539-z

More frequent fires in the North American boreal are causing shifts from conifer to deciduous forests. This study finds that when deciduous forests burn, their carbon losses are driven by weather, but are lower than in conifer forests, potentially dampening climate–fire feedbacks.

The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence (SQI), a research unit in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, brings together researchers from across MIT who combine their diverse expertise to understand intelligence through tightly coupled scientific inquiry and rigorous engineering. These researchers engage in collaborative efforts spanning science, engineering, the humanities, and more. 

SQI seeks to comprehend how brains produce intelligence and how it can be replicated in artificial systems to address real-world problems that exceed the capabilities of current artificial intelligence technologies.

“In SQI, we are studying intelligence scientifically and generically, in the hope that by studying neuroscience and behavior in humans and animals, and also studying what we can build as intelligent engineering artifacts, we'll be able to understand the fundamental underlying principles of intelligence,” says Leslie Pack Kaelbling, SQI director of research and the Panasonic Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

“We in SQI believe that understanding human intelligence is one of the greatest open questions in science — right up there with the origin of the universe and our place in it, and the origin of life. The question of human intelligence has two parts: how it works, and where it comes from. If we understand those, we will see payoffs well beyond our current imaginings," says Jim DiCarlo, SQI director and the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Exploring the great mysteries of the mind

The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence was recently renamed in recognition of a major gift from the Siegel Family Endowment that is enabling further growth in SQI’s research and activities.

SQI’s efforts are organized around missions — long-term, collaborative projects rooted in foundational questions about intelligence and supported by platforms — systems, and software that enable new research and create benchmarking and testing interfaces. 

“Ours is the only unit at MIT dedicated to building a scientific understanding of intelligence while working with researchers across the entire Institute,” DiCarlo says. “There has been remarkable progress in AI over the past decade, but I believe the next decade will bring even greater advances in our understanding of human intelligence — advances that will reshape what we call AI. By supporting us, David Siegel, the Siegel Family Endowment, and our other donors are demonstrating their confidence in our approach."

A legacy of interdisciplinary support

In 2011, David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91 founded the Siegel Family Endowment (SFE) to support organizations working at the intersections of learning, workforce, and infrastructure. SFE funds organizations addressing society’s most critical challenges while supporting innovative civic and community leaders, social entrepreneurs, researchers, and others driving this work forward. Siegel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. While in graduate school at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, he worked on robotics in the group of Tomás Lozano-Pérez — currently the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Excellence — focusing on sensing and grasping. Later, he co-founded Two Sigma with the belief that innovative technology, AI, and data science could help uncover value in the world’s data. Today, Two Sigma drives transformation across the financial services industry in investment management, venture capital, private equity, and real estate.

Siegel explains, “The human brain may very well be the most complex physical system in the universe, yet most people haven't shown much interest in how it works. People take the mind for granted, yet wonder so much about other scientific mysteries, such as the origin of the universe. My fascination with the brain and its intersection with artificial intelligence stems from this. I don’t care whether there are commercial applications for this quest; instead, we should pursue research like that done at the MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence to advance our understanding of ourselves. As we uncover more about human intelligence, I am hopeful that we will lay the groundwork not only for advancing artificial intelligence but also for extending our own thinking.”

As a long-time champion of the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines (CBMM), a National Science Foundation-funded collaborative interdisciplinary research thrust, and one of the first donors to the MIT Quest for Intelligence, David Siegel helped lay the foundation for the research underway today. In early 2024, he founded Open Athena, a nonprofit that bridges the gap between academic research and the cutting edge of AI. Open Athena equips universities with elite AI and data engineering talent to accelerate breakthrough discoveries at scale. Siegel serves on the MIT Corporation Executive Committee, is vice-chair of the Scratch Foundation, and is a member of the Cornell Tech Council. He also sits on the boards of Re:Build Manufacturing, Khan Academy, NYC FIRST, and Carnegie Hall.

A Catalyst for Global Collaboration

MIT President Sally Kornbluth says, “Of all the donors and supporters whose generosity fueled the Quest for Intelligence, no one has been more important from the beginning than David Siegel. Without his longstanding commitment to CBMM and his support for the Quest, this community might never have formed. There’s every reason to think that David’s recent gift, which renames the Quest for Intelligence and also supports the Schwarzman College of Computing, will be even more powerful in shaping the future of this initiative and of the field itself.” She continues, “Fueled by generous donors — particularly David Siegel’s transformative gift — SQI is poised to take on an even more important role.”

SQI scientists and engineers are presenting their work broadly, publishing papers, and developing new tools and technologies that are used in research institutions worldwide, as they engage with colleagues in disciplines across the Institute and in universities and institutions around the globe. DiCarlo explains, “We're part of the Schwarzman College of Computing, at the nexus between the people interested in biology and various forms of intelligence and the people interested in AI. We're working with partners at other universities, in nonprofits, and in industry — we can't do it alone.”

“Fundamentally, we're not an AI effort. We're a human intelligence effort using the tools of engineering,” DiCarlo says. “That gives us, among other things, very useful insights for human learning and health, but also very useful tools for AI — including AI that will just work a lot better in a human world.” 

The entire SQI community of faculty, students, and staff is excited to face new challenges in the efforts to understand the fundamentals of intelligence.

New missions and next horizons

SQI research is broadening: Mission principal investigators are integrating their efforts across areas of interest, increasing their impact on the field. In the coming months, the organization plans to launch a new Social Intelligence Mission.

"We need to focus on problems that mirror natural and artificial intelligence — making sure that we are evaluating new models on tasks that mirror what humans and other natural intelligence can do,” says Nick Roy, SQI director of systems engineering and professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. He predicts that SQI’s future research will rely on asking the right questions: “[While] we are good at picking tasks that test our computational models, and we're extremely good at picking tasks that kind of align with what our models can already do, we need to get better at choosing tasks and benchmarks that also elicit something about natural intelligence,” he says.

On November 24, 2025, faculty, staff, students, and supporters gathered at an event titled “The Next Horizon: Quest’s Future” to celebrate SQI’s next chapter. The event consisted of an afternoon of research updates, a panel discussion, and a poster session on new and evolving research, and was attended by David Siegel, representatives from the Siegel Family Endowment, and various members of the MIT Corporation. Recordings of the presentations from the event are available on SQI’s YouTube channel.

Generative artificial intelligence models have left such an indelible impact on digital content creation that it’s getting harder to recall what the internet was like before it. You can call on these AI tools for clever projects such as videos and photos — but their flair for the creative hasn’t quite crossed over into the physical world just yet.

So why haven’t we seen generative AI-enabled personalized objects, such as phone cases and pots, in places like homes, offices, and stores yet? According to MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers, a key issue is the mechanical integrity of the 3D model.

While AI can help generate personalized 3D models that you can fabricate, those systems don’t often consider the physical properties of the 3D model. MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) PhD student and CSAIL engineer Faraz Faruqi has explored this trade-off, creating generative AI-based systems that can make aesthetic changes to designs while preserving functionality, and another that modifies structures with the desired tactile properties users want to feel.

Making it real 

Together with researchers at Google, Stability AI, and Northeastern University, Faruqi has now found a way to make real-world objects with AI, creating items that are both durable and exhibit the user’s intended appearance and texture. With the AI-powered “MechStyle” system, users simply upload a 3D model or select a preset asset of things like vases and hooks, and prompt the tool using images or text to create a personalized version. A generative AI model then modifies the 3D geometry, while MechStyle simulates how those changes will impact particular parts, ensuring vulnerable areas remain structurally sound. When you’re happy with this AI-enhanced blueprint, you can 3D print it and use it in the real world.

You could select a model of, say, a wall hook, and the material you’ll be printing it with (for example, plastics like polylactic acid). Then, you can prompt the system to create a personalized version, with directions like, “generate a cactus-like hook.” The AI model will work in tandem with the simulation module and generate a 3D model resembling a cactus while also having the structural properties of a hook. This green, ridged accessory can then be used to hang up mugs, coats, and backpacks. Such creations are possible thanks, in part, to a stylization process, where the system changes a model’s geometry based on its understanding of the text prompt, and working with the feedback received from the simulation module.

According to CSAIL researchers, 3D stylization used to come with unintended consequences. Their formative study revealed that only about 26 percent of 3D models remained structurally viable after they were modified, meaning that the AI system didn’t understand the physics of the models it was modifying.

“We want to use AI to create models that you can actually fabricate and use in the real world,” says Faruqi, who is a lead author on a paper presenting the project. “So MechStyle actually simulates how GenAI-based changes will impact a structure. Our system allows you to personalize the tactile experience for your item, incorporating your personal style into it while ensuring the object can sustain everyday use.”

This computational thoroughness could eventually help users personalize their belongings, creating a unique pair of glasses with speckled blue and beige dots resembling fish scales, for example. It also produced a pillbox with a rocky texture that’s checkered with pink and aqua spots. The system’s potential extends to crafting unique home and office decor, like a lampshade resembling red magma. It can even design assistive technology fit to users’ specifications, such as finger splints to aid with dexterous injuries and utensil grips to aid with motor impairments.

In the future, MechStyle could also be useful in creating prototypes for accessories and other handheld products you might sell in a toy shop, hardware store, or craft boutique. The goal, CSAIL researchers say, is for both expert and novice designers to spend more time brainstorming and testing out different 3D designs, instead of assembling and customizing items by hand.

Staying strong

To ensure MechStyle’s creations could withstand daily use, the researchers augmented their generative AI technology with a type of physics simulation called a finite element analysis (FEA). You can imagine a 3D model of an item, such as a pair of glasses, with a sort of heat map indicating which regions are structurally viable under a realistic amount of weight, and which ones aren’t. As AI refines this model, the physics simulations highlight which parts of the model are getting weaker and prevent further changes.

Faruqi adds that running these simulations every time a change is made drastically slows down the AI process, so MechStyle is designed to know when and where to do additional structural analyses. “MechStyle’s adaptive scheduling strategy keeps track of what changes are happening in specific points in the model. When the genAI system makes tweaks that endanger certain regions of the model, our approach simulates the physics of the design again. MechStyle will make subsequent modifications to make sure the model doesn’t break after fabrication.”

Combining the FEA process with adaptive scheduling allowed MechStyle to generate objects that were as high as 100 percent structurally viable. Testing out 30 different 3D models with styles resembling things like bricks, stones, and cacti, the team found that the most efficient way to create structurally viable objects was to dynamically identify weak regions and tweak the generative AI process to mitigate its effect. In these scenarios, the researchers found that they could either stop stylization completely when a particular stress threshold was reached, or gradually make smaller refinements to prevent at-risk areas from approaching that mark.

The system also offers two different modes: a freestyle feature that allows AI to quickly visualize different styles on your 3D model, and a MechStyle one that carefully analyzes the structural impacts of your tweaks. You can explore different ideas, then try the MechStyle mode to see how those artistic flourishes will affect the durability of particular regions of the model.

CSAIL researchers add that while their model can ensure your model remains structurally sound before being 3D printed, it’s not yet able to improve 3D models that weren’t viable to begin with. If you upload such a file to MechStyle, you’ll receive an error message, but Faruqi and his colleagues intend to improve the durability of those faulty models in the future.

What’s more, the team hopes to use generative AI to create 3D models for users, instead of stylizing presets and user-uploaded designs. This would make the system even more user-friendly, so that those who are less familiar with 3D models, or can’t find their design online, can simply generate it from scratch. Let’s say you wanted to fabricate a unique type of bowl, and that 3D model wasn’t available in a repository; AI could create it for you instead.

“While style-transfer for 2D images works incredibly well, not many works have explored how this transfer to 3D,” says Google Research Scientist Fabian Manhardt, who wasn’t involved in the paper. “Essentially, 3D is a much more difficult task, as training data is scarce and changing the object’s geometry can harm its structure, rendering it unusable in the real world. MechStyle helps solve this problem, allowing for 3D stylization without breaking the object’s structural integrity via simulation. This gives people the power to be creative and better express themselves through products that are tailored towards them.”

Farqui wrote the paper with senior author Stefanie Mueller, who is an MIT associate professor and CSAIL principal investigator, and two other CSAIL colleagues: researcher Leandra Tejedor SM ’24, and postdoc Jiaji Li. Their co-authors are Amira Abdel-Rahman PhD ’25, now an assistant professor at Cornell University, and Martin Nisser SM ’19, PhD ’24; Google researcher Vrushank Phadnis; Stability AI Vice President of Research Varun Jampani; MIT Professor and Center for Bits and Atoms Director Neil Gershenfeld; and Northeastern University Assistant Professor Megan Hofmann.

Their work was supported by the MIT-Google Program for Computing Innovation. It was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on Computational Fabrication in November.

The Mexico City Initiative at MIT, led by the Institute’s Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU), has conceived and modeled an impressive array of solutions for challenges facing urban areas in Mexico and beyond. Faculty and students have designed the repurposing of a vintage roller coaster as a public meeting space, modeled strategies to decarbonize a municipal neighborhood, and proposed plans to convert nearly 990 acres of what was once Latin America’s largest landfill into a model of ecological restoration and clean energy production. The initiative has also spawned a sustainable construction startup that’s contributing to local economies in both Mexico and the United States.

When asked what’s most impactful about their work, however, those leading and collaborating with the LCAU’s Mexico City Initiative point to something else: the cross-border human connections they say are essential to continuing the ideation, development, and implementation of projects designed for Mexico City, but likely to be scalable and beneficial in urban centers around the world.

“To really create change in cities, we need to build relationships, friendships, and new networks. And through building them together, we can go so much further,” says Sarah Williams, director of the LCAU, which leads the initiative in collaboration with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Mexico City government, and the engineering firm Mota-Engil Mexico.

“I think one of the big things we’re proud of is there have been a lot of personal connections created between MIT and UNAM, and I think research collaboration will result from these connections,” says Onésimo Flores PhD ’13, director general of Mota-Engil Mexico’s transportation mobility division. “I think what we have contributed to building is deepening collaboration.”   

UNAM associate professor of architecture Elena Tudela agrees, noting that “beyond the projects themselves, we have developed a genuine friendship that I hope will continue long after this specific collaboration ends.”

“What I personally value most from these years of collaboration on Mexico City’s energy transition is the set of relationships we have built — with researchers, professors and especially the team at the LCAU,” says Tudela, an initiative collaborator. “For local students, the impact has been even more profound. It built bonds that transcend the workshop’s objectives, contributing to a deeper understanding of design as a collaborative, multidisciplinary practice.”

Williams credits Flores with helping to obtain Mota-Engil’s crucial financial support for the LCAU’s Mexico City Initiative. An MIT alumnus who earned his PhD in urban studies and planning in 2013 with Mota-Engil scholarship aid, Flores says the company’s support is meant to accomplish three goals: connect Mexican researchers with MIT, get Mexican students involved in MIT programs, and stimulate interest in projects relevant to cities like Mexico City among MIT faculty.   

“If you can find urban solutions for a city as complex as Mexico City, you can probably figure it out for any city in the world, particularly in the Global South,” he says.

Over the past three years, faculty and students from MIT and UNAM have worked on projects centered on energy transition. Project teams, collaborators, interested local officials, business leaders, and others gathered for a recent symposium showcasing the progress made on the Mexico City Initiative’s projects so far.

Held in Mexico City last fall and featuring presentations by several MIT faculty, the “Energy Transitions” symposium was hosted by the LCAU, UNAM, and Mota-Engil Mexico. Its purpose “was to make sure the research effort that was done together was presented to the public and private sectors — groups that might be able to take the research to the next level,” says Williams, an MIT associate professor of technology and urban planning.

“The lecture series was exciting because we saw an interest in extending all the projects. I also think the conversations and ideas that were had in the room spark the kind of civic debate needed to transform our cities,” Williams says.

Established in 2013, the LCAU’s work cuts across diverse research fields to create innovation in cities.

“There’s not one field that can transform our future cities — innovation happens when we cross disciplines,” says Williams, who became LCAU director four years ago and has since focused the center’s mission on building and maintaining long-term relationships with cities through “City Initiatives.”

Other City Initiatives have included collaborations in Boston, as well as Sydney, Australia; Beirut, Lebanon; Bogota, Colombia; and Pristina, Kosovo. Mexico City was among the first initiatives and is the LCAU’s longest-standing program. Activities have included several classes held between MIT and Mexico City, a public exhibition, a hackathon with MITdesignX, and numerous joint research projects.

Williams describes it as “a fantastic relationship,” which began with development of a strategic plan for a Mexico City Innovation Lab, leading to a decision to focus the initiative on themes playing out over the course of about two years. The current theme is Energy Intersections, which looks at the role design plays in transitioning to cleaner energy infrastructure. 

“This came from the group seeing that Mexico wanted to be a player in the global manufacturing marketplace and one of the barriers was how heavily polluted their energy infrastructure was,” Willliams says.

“The LCAU was founded for this idea that the work and research that we do about cities should be experimental, but also framed within contemporary policies and politics,” she says, adding that the team had considered other possible themes — from water and emergency planning to housing — but “as we started to think about energy, it just became so clearly important.”

Attracting about 70 attendees from Mexico City’s academic, government, and private sectors, the symposium was convened to enable MIT and UNAM researchers to share findings and discuss paths forward for several projects. Featured projects included:

• Redesigning Vallejo-I — aimed at transforming Mexico City’s Vallejo Industrial Zone into a revitalized hub for industry, transportation and housing;
• Decarbonize and Revitalize: Urban Regeneration for Mexico City’s Neighborhoods — which envisions ways for energy, equity, and design to regenerate Mexico City neighborhoods, using the Daniel Garza neighborhood as a model; and
• Bordo Poniente: Territories of Industrial and Ecological Metabolism — which presents strategies for reinventing what was once the world’s third-largest solid waste landfill (Bordo Poniente).

Leading the Bordo Poniente panel was project leader Eran Ben-Joseph, professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at MIT. Developed with UNAM and Mota-Engil partners, the project involved 12 MIT School of Architecture and Planning graduate students working across disciplines to address four integrated objectives: converting waste into public value, advancing energy transition (through methane/leachate capture), promoting equity and environmental justice for neighboring communities, and generating actionable policy recommendations, Ben-Joseph says.

“This collaborative effort exemplifies how international courses can combine rigorous fieldwork, interdisciplinary expertise, and community engagement to reimagine a toxic site as a model of urban regeneration and ecological repair,” he says, adding that the project “reflects MIT’s commitments to climate action, urban innovation, and applied systems thinking.” With over 100,000 landfills worldwide, he says, “a replicable ‘Bordo Model’ positions MIT as a global leader in transformation of waste landscapes into energy, ecological, and civic assets.”

In a similar vein, the Vallejo project reimagines urban industrial blocks as engines of clean energy generation, water resilience, and sustainable mobility. Led by MIT Department of Architecture Lecturer Roi Salgueiro Barrio and moderated by UNAM associate professor of architecture and project collaborator Daniel Daou, the symposium’s Redesigning Vallejo panel discussed how the project establishes an actionable framework for energy and industrial transition that can inspire and guide the revival of other industrial areas.

Finally, MIT professor of architecture and urbanism and project leader Rafi Segal presented the team’s Daniel Garza neighborhood case study, which highlighted two replicable urban planning and community clean energy project designs resulting from work by MIT and UNAM researchers.

“The most impactful aspect of ‘Decarbonize and Revitalize’ is its ability to merge energy transition with urban regeneration at the neighborhood scale. The project does not fit neatly into a single disciplinary category; it operates at the intersection of energy, design, and social infrastructure,” says Daniela Martinez Chapa, a former MIT student and an architect and urban designer who served as research assistant on the MIT team. “The project exemplifies MIT’s commitment to collaborative, context-specific innovation,” she adds.

Like others involved with the Mexico City Initiative, UNAM’s Tudela pointed out how working across disciplines, institutions, and borders has benefited both UNAM and MIT.

“MIT brings cutting-edge tools and methodologies in fields such as energy and urban data science, while UNAM contributes deep local expertise, strong social perspectives, and long-standing engagement with communities,” Tudela says. “This combination has produced highly creative, context-sensitive outcomes.”

As for next steps, Williams is hopeful that conversations started at this fall’s symposium might push the team’s research into the local limelight, helping them go from research and strategies to on-the-ground reality. She pointed to the success of an earlier LCAU Mexico City project as an example of what can happen when the right ideas and stakeholders coalesce.

For the 2022 Mextropoli Architecture and City Festival in Mexico City, an MIT team presented “Sueños con Fiber/Timber, Earth/Concrete.”

“As part of that project, we took a decommissioned roller coaster and reused it as a public forum space. And so that was talking about reuse of wood and making sure that building materials are reused in unique ways,” Williams says.

Adjacent to the repurposed roller coaster, Caitlin Mueller, an associate professor in MIT’s departments of Architecture and Civil and Environmental Engineering, built a structure made of 3D printed bricks that capture the traditional style of Mexican construction, but with a fraction of the carbon footprint. Mueller has since taken the Sueños project further, co-founding a design and technology company (Forma Systems) focused on expanding access to high-quality, low-carbon affordable housing and building systems by reimagining widely available materials such as concrete and earth.

“Caitlin’s project with the bricks is just such a good example of what the Cities Initiative can do. We seeded collaborative research, and now there’s a startup based off the idea, and they are continuing to do the work,” Williams says. “I think that’s the idea — we help to fund research that combines deep local knowledge and MIT’s innovation environment to help inspire new ideas and technologies for cities.

“I would hope these new projects just presented in Mexico would have a similar trajectory,” she says. “The future is open.”

Researchers have demonstrated remotely controlling a wheelchair over Bluetooth. CISA has issued an advisory.

CISA said the WHILL wheelchairs did not enforce authentication for Bluetooth connections, allowing an attacker who is in Bluetooth range of the targeted device to pair with it. The attacker could then control the wheelchair’s movements, override speed restrictions, and manipulate configuration profiles, all without requiring credentials or user interaction.