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Youssef Marzouk ’97, SM ’99, PhD ’04, the Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) at MIT, has been appointed associate dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, effective July 1.

Marzouk, who has served as co-director of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE) since 2018, will work in his new role to foster a stronger community among bilingual computing faculty across MIT. A key aspect of this work will be providing additional structure and support for faculty members who have been hired into shared positions in departments and the college.

Shared faculty at MIT represent a new generation of scholars whose research and teaching integrate the forefront of computing and another discipline (positions that were initially envisioned as “bridge faculty” in the 2019 Provost’s Task Force reports). Since 2021, the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing has been steadily growing this cohort. In collaboration with 24 departments across the Institute, 20 faculty have been hired in shared positions: three in the School of Architecture and Planning; four in the School of Engineering; seven in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; four in the School of Science; and two in the MIT Sloan School of Management.

“Youssef’s experience leading cross-cutting efforts in research and education in CCSE is of direct relevance to the broader goal of bringing MIT’s computing bilinguals together in meaningful ways. His insights and collaborative spirit position him to make a lasting impact in this role. We are delighted to welcome him to this new leadership position in the college,” says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

“I’m excited that Youssef has agreed to take on this important role in the college. His thoughtful approach and nuanced understanding of MIT’s academic landscape make him ideally suited to support our shared faculty community. I look forward to working closely with him,” says Asu Ozdaglar, deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and the MathWorks Professor of EECS.

Marzouk’s research interests lie at the intersection of computational mathematics, statistical inference, and physical modeling. He and his students develop and analyze new methodologies for uncertainty quantification, Bayesian computation, and machine learning in complex physical systems. His recent work has centered on algorithms for data assimilation and inverse problems; high-dimensional learning and surrogate modeling; optimal experimental design; and transportation of measure as a tool for statistical inference and generative modeling. He is strongly motivated by the interplay between theory, methods, and diverse applications, and has collaborated with other researchers at MIT on topics ranging from materials science to fusion energy to the geosciences.

In 2018, he was appointed co-director of CCSE with Nicolas Hadjiconstantinou, the Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanical Engineering. An interdisciplinary research and education center dedicated to advancing innovative computational methods and applications, CCSE became one of the academic units of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing when it formally launched in 2020.

CCSE has grown significantly under Marzouk and Hadjiconstantinou’s leadership. Most recently, they spearheaded the design and launch of the center’s new standalone PhD program in computational science and engineering, which will welcome its second cohort in September. Collectively, CCSE’s standalone and interdisciplinary PhD programs currently enroll more than 70 graduate students.

Marzouk is also a principal investigator in the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, and a core member of MIT’s Statistics and Data Science Center.

Among his many honors and awards, he was named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2025. He was elected associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2018 and received the National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Award in 2012, the MIT Junior Bose Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012, and the DOE Early Career Research Award in 2010. His recent external engagement includes service on multiple journal editorial boards; co-chairing major SIAM conferences and elected service on various SIAM committees; leadership of scientific advisory boards, including that of the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM); and organizing many other international programs and workshops.

At MIT, in addition to co-directing CCSE, Marzouk has served as both graduate and undergraduate officer of the Department of AeroAstro. He also leads the MIT Center for the Exascale Simulation of Materials in Extreme Environments, an interdisciplinary computing effort sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Predictive Science Academic Alliance program.

Marzouk received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from MIT. He spent four years at Sandia National Laboratories, as a Truman Fellow and a member of the technical staff, before joining the MIT faculty in 2009.

Young people should be able to access information, speak to each other and to the world, play games, and express themselves online without the government making decisions about what speech is permissible. But in one of the latest misguided attempts to protect children online, internet users of all ages in the UK are being forced to prove their age before they can access millions of websites under the country’s Online Safety Act (OSA). 

The legislation attempts to make the UK the “the safest place” in the world to be online by placing a duty of care on online platforms to protect their users from harmful content. It mandates that any site accessible in the UK—including social media, search engines, music sites, and adult content providers—enforce age checks to prevent children from seeing harmful content. This is defined in three categories, and failure to comply could result in fines of up to 10% of global revenue or courts blocking services:

1. Primary priority content that is harmful to children: 
   1. Pornographic content.
   2. Content which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for:
      1. suicide;
      2. self-harm; or 
      3. an eating disorder or behaviours associated with an eating disorder.
2. Priority content that is harmful to children: 
1. Content that is abusive on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or gender reassignment;
2. Content that incites hatred against people on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or gender reassignment; 
3. Content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions for serious violence against a person; 
4. Bullying content;
5. Content which depicts serious violence against or graphicly depicts serious injury to a person or animal (whether real or fictional); 
6. Content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions for stunts and challenges that are highly likely to result in serious injury; and 
7. Content that encourages the self-administration of harmful substances.
3. Non-designated content that is harmful to children (NDC): 
   1. Content is NDC if it presents a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of children in the UK, provided that the risk of harm does not flow from any of the following:
      1. the content’s potential financial impact;
      2. the safety or quality of goods featured in the content; or
      3. the way in which a service featured in the content may be performed.

Online service providers must make a judgement about whether the content they host is harmful to children, and if so, address the risk by implementing a number of measures, which includes, but is not limited to:

1. Robust age checks: Services must use “highly effective age assurance to protect children from this content. If services have minimum age requirements and are not using highly effective age assurance to prevent children under that age using the service, they should assume that younger children are on their service and take appropriate steps to protect them from harm.”
   
   To do this, all users on sites that host this content must verify their age, for example by uploading a form of ID like a passport, taking a face selfie or video to facilitate age assurance through third-party services, or giving permission for the age-check service to access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. 
   
   
2. Safer algorithms: Services “will be expected to configure their algorithms to ensure children are not presented with the most harmful content and take appropriate action to protect them from other harmful content.”
   
   
3. Effective moderation: All services “must have content moderation systems in place to take swift action against content harmful to children when they become aware of it.” 

Since these measures took effect in late July, social media platforms Reddit, Bluesky, Discord, and X all introduced age checks to block children from seeing harmful content on their sites. Porn websites like Pornhub and YouPorn implemented age assurance checks on their sites, now asking users to either upload government-issued ID, provide an email address for technology to analyze other online services where it has been used, or submit their information to a third-party vendor for age verification. Sites like Spotify are also requiring users to submit face scans to third-party digital identity company Yoti to access content labelled 18+. Ofcom, which oversees implementation of the OSA, went further by sending letters to try to enforce the UK legislation on U.S.-based companies such as the right-wing platform Gab. 

The UK Must Do Better

The UK is not alone in pursuing such a misguided approach to protect children online: the U.S. Supreme Court recently paved the way for states to require websites to check the ages of users before allowing them access to graphic sexual materials; courts in France last week ruled that porn websites can check users’ ages; the European Commission is pushing forward with plans to test its age-verification app; and Australia’s ban on youth under the age of 16 accessing social media is likely to be implemented in December. 

But the UK’s scramble to find an effective age verification method shows us that there isn't one, and it’s high time for politicians to take that seriously. The Online Safety Act is a threat to the privacy of users, restricts free expression by arbitrating speech online, exposes users to algorithmic discrimination through face checks, and leaves millions of people without a personal device or form of ID excluded from accessing the internet.

And, to top it all off, UK internet users are sending a very clear message that they do not want anything to do with this censorship regime. Just days after age checks came into effect, VPN apps became the most downloaded on Apple's App Store in the UK, and a petition calling for the repeal of the Online Safety Act recently hit more than 400,000 signatures. 

The internet must remain a place where all voices can be heard, free from discrimination or censorship by government agencies. If the UK really wants to achieve its goal of being the safest place in the world to go online, it must lead the way in introducing policies that actually protect all users—including children—rather than pushing the enforcement of legislation that harms the very people it was meant to protect.

In the push to shrink and enhance technologies that control light, MIT researchers have unveiled a new platform that pushes the limits of modern optics through nanophotonics, the manipulation of light on the nanoscale, or billionths of a meter.

The result is a class of ultracompact optical devices that are not only smaller and more efficient than existing technologies, but also dynamically tunable, or switchable, from one optical mode to another. Until now, this has been an elusive combination in nanophotonics.

The work is reported in the July 8 issue of Nature Photonics.

“This work marks a significant step toward a future in which nanophotonic devices are not only compact and efficient, but also reprogrammable and adaptive, capable of dynamically responding to external inputs. The  marriage of emerging quantum materials and established nanophotonics architectures will surely bring advances to both fields,” says Riccardo Comin, MIT’s Class of 1947 Career Development Associate Professor of Physics and leader of the work. Comin is also affiliated with MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory and Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE).

Comin’s colleagues on the work are Ahmet Kemal Demir, an MIT graduate student in physics; Luca Nessi, a former MIT postdoc who is now a postdoc at Politecnico di Milano; Sachin Vaidya, a postdoc in RLE; Connor A. Occhialini PhD ’24, who is now a postdoc at Columbia University; and Marin Soljačić, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at MIT.

Demir and Nessi are co-first authors of the Nature Photonics paper.

Toward new nanophotonic materials

Nanophotonics has traditionally relied on materials like silicon, silicon nitride, or titanium dioxide. These are the building blocks of devices that guide and confine light using structures such as waveguides, resonators, and photonic crystals. The latter are periodic arrangements of materials that control how light propagates, much like how a semiconductor crystal affects electron motion.

While highly effective, these materials are constrained by two major limitations. The first involves their refractive indices. These are a measure of how strongly a material interacts with light; the higher the refractive index, the more the material “grabs” or interacts with the light, bending it more sharply and slowing it down more. The refractive indices of silicon and other traditional nanophotonic materials are often modest, which limits how tightly light can be confined and how small optical devices can be made.

A second major limitation of traditional nanophotonic materials: once a structure is fabricated, its optical behavior is essentially fixed. There is usually no way to significantly reconfigure how it responds to light without physically altering it. “Tunability is essential for many next-gen photonics applications, enabling adaptive imaging, precision sensing, reconfigurable light sources, and trainable optical neural networks,” says Vaidya.

Introducing chromium sulfide bromide

These are the longstanding challenges that chromium sulfide bromide (CrSBr) is poised to solve. CrSBr is a layered quantum material with a rare combination of magnetic order and strong optical response. Central to its unique optical properties are excitons: quasiparticles formed when a material absorbs light and an electron is excited, leaving behind a positively charged “hole.” The electron and hole remain bound together by electrostatic attraction, forming a sort of neutral particle that can strongly interact with light.

In CrSBr, excitons dominate the optical response and are highly sensitive to magnetic fields, which means they can be manipulated using external controls.

Because of these excitons, CrSBr exhibits an exceptionally large refractive index that allows researchers to sculpt the material to fabricate optical structures like photonic crystals that are up to an order of magnitude thinner than those made from traditional materials. “We can make optical structures as thin as 6 nanometers, or just seven layers of atoms stacked on top of each other,” says Demir.

And crucially, by applying a modest magnetic field, the MIT researchers were able to continuously and reversibly switch the optical mode. In other words, they demonstrated the ability to dynamically change how light flows through the nanostructure, all without any moving parts or changes in temperature. “This degree of control is enabled by a giant, magnetically induced shift in the refractive index, far beyond what is typically achievable in established photonic materials,” says Demir.

In fact, the interaction between light and excitons in CrSBr is so strong that it leads to the formation of polaritons, hybrid light-matter particles that inherit properties from both components. These polaritons enable new forms of photonic behavior, such as enhanced nonlinearities and new regimes of quantum light transport. And unlike conventional systems that require external optical cavities to reach this regime, CrSBr supports polaritons intrinsically.

While this demonstration uses standalone CrSBr flakes, the material can also be integrated into existing photonic platforms, such as integrated photonic circuits. This makes CrSBr immediately relevant to real-world applications, where it can serve as a tunable layer or component in otherwise passive devices.

The MIT results were achieved at very cold temperatures of up to 132 kelvins (-222 degrees Fahrenheit). Although this is below room temperature, there are compelling use cases, such as quantum simulation, nonlinear optics, and reconfigurable polaritonic platforms, where the unparalleled tunability of CrSBr could justify operation in cryogenic environments.

In other words, says Demir, “CrSBr is so unique with respect to other common materials that even going down to cryogenic temperatures will be worth the trouble, hopefully.”

That said, the team is also exploring related materials with higher magnetic ordering temperatures to enable similar functionality at more accessible conditions.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Research Office, and a MathWorks Science Fellowship. The work was performed in part at MIT.nano.

Airportr is a service that allows passengers to have their luggage picked up, checked, and delivered to their destinations. As you might expect, it’s used by wealthy or important people. So if the company’s website is insecure, you’d be able to spy on lots of wealthy or important people. And maybe even steal their luggage.

Researchers at the firm CyberX9 found that simple bugs in Airportr’s website allowed them to access virtually all of those users’ personal information, including travel plans, or even gain administrator privileges that would have allowed a hacker to redirect or steal luggage in transit. Among even the small sample of user data that the researchers reviewed and shared with WIRED they found what appear to be the personal information and travel records of multiple government officials and diplomats from the UK, Switzerland, and the US...

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