ICE has been invading U.S. cities, targeting, surveilling, harassing, assaulting, detaining, and torturing people who are undocumented immigrants. They also have targeted people with work permits, asylum seekers, permanent residents (people holding “green cards”), naturalized citizens, and even citizens by birth. ICE has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on surveillance technology to spy on anyone—and potentially everyone—in the United States. It can be hard to imagine how to defend oneself against such an overwhelming force. But a few enterprising hackers have started projects to do counter surveillance against ICE, and hopefully protect their communities through clever use of technology. 

Let’s start with Flock, the company behind a number of automated license plate reader (ALPR) and other camera technologies. You might be surprised at how many Flock cameras there are in your community. Many large and small municipalities around the country have signed deals with Flock for license plate readers to track the movement of all cars in their city. Even though these deals are signed by local police departments, oftentimes ICE also gains access. 

Because of their ubiquity, people are interested in finding out where and how many Flock cameras are in their community. One project that can help with this is the OUI-SPY, a small piece of open source hardware. The OUI-SPY runs on a cheap Arduino compatible chip called an ESP-32. There are multiple programs available for loading on the chip, such as “Flock You,” which allows people to detect Flock cameras and “Sky-Spy” to detect overhead drones. There’s also “BLE Detect,” which detects various Bluetooth signals including ones from Axon, Meta’s Ray-Bans that secretly record you, and more. It also has a mode commonly known as “fox hunting” to track down a specific device. Activists and researchers can use this tool to map out different technologies and quantify the spread of surveillance. 

There’s also the open source Wigle app which is primarily designed for mapping out Wi-Fi, but also has the ability to make an audio alert when a specific Wi-Fi or Bluetooth identifier is detected. This means you can set it up to get a notification when it detects products from Flock, Axon, or other nasties in their vicinity. 

One enterprising YouTuber, Benn Jordan, figured out a way to fool Flock cameras into not recording his license plate simply by painting some minor visual noise on his license plate. This is innocuous enough that any human will still be able to read his license plate, but it completely prevented Flock devices from recognizing his license plate as a license plate at the time. Some states have outlawed drivers obscuring their license plates, so taking such action is not recommended. 

Jordan later went on to discover hundreds of misconfigured Flock cameras that were exposing their administrator interface without a password on the public internet. This would allow anyone with an internet connection to view a live surveillance feed, download 30 days of video, view logs, and more. The cameras pointed at parks, public trails, busy intersections, and even a playground. This was a massive breach of public trust and a huge mistake for a company that claims to be working for public safety.

Other hackers have taken on the task of open-source intelligence and community reporting. One interesting example is deflock.me and alpr.watch, which are crowdsourced maps of ALPR cameras. Much like the OUI-SPY project, this allows activists to map out and expose Flock surveillance cameras in their community. 

There have also been several ICE reporting apps released, including apps to report ICE sightings in your area such Stop ICE Alerts, ICEOUT.org, and ICE Block. ICEBlock was delisted by Apple at the request of Attorney General Pam Bondi, a fact we are suing over. There is also Eyes Up, an app to securely record and archive ICE raids, which was taken down by Apple earlier this year. 

Another interesting project documenting ICE and creating a trove of open-source intelligence is ICE List Wiki which contains info on companies that have contracts with ICE, incidents and encounters with ICE, and vehicles ICE uses. 

People without programming knowledge can also get involved. In Chicago, people used whistles to warn their neighbors that ICE was present or in the area. Many people 3D-printed whistles along with instructional booklets to hand out to their communities, allowing a wider distribution of whistles and consequently earlier warnings for their neighbors. 

Many hackers have started hosting digital security trainings for their communities or building web sites with security advice, including how to remove your data from the watchful eyes of the surveillance industry. To reach a broader community, trainers have even started hosting trainings on how to defend their communities and what to do in an ICE raid in video games, such as Fortnight. 

There is also EFF’s own Rayhunter project for detecting cell-site simulators, about which we have written extensively. Rayhunter runs on a cheap mobile hotspot and doesn’t require deep technical knowledge to use.

It’s important to remember that we are not powerless. Even in the face of a domestic law enforcement presence with massive surveillance capabilities and military-esque technologies, there are still ways to engage in surveillance self-defense. We cannot give into nihilism and fear. We must continue to find small ways to protect ourselves and our communities, and when we can, fight back. 

EFF is not affiliated with any of these projects (other than Rayhunter) and does not endorse them. We don’t make any statements about the legality of using any of these projects. Please consult with an attorney to determine what risks there may be. 

Related Cases: EFF v. DOJ, DHS (ICE tracking apps)

MIT’s senior capstone course 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes), an iconic class known colloquially on campus as “two double-oh nine,” emulates what engineers experience while working as part of a design team at a product development firm. The annual prototype launch is a colorful and exciting culmination of a semester’s worth of work.

“This fall, 97 students split into six teams entered the rapid-fire cycle of product engineering, looping between ideas, prototypes, failures, fixes, and breakthroughs,” said Josh Wiesman, 2.009 lecturer, in the program’s opening remarks. “They pushed themselves out of their comfort zone and learned to oscillate between creativity and technical rigor. Thermal, fluids, mechanics, materials, instrumentation — everything you can imagine came back around in new and unexpected ways.”

Wiesman’s remarks hinted at this year’s theme, which co-instructor Peko Hosoi, the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering, reminded spectators was announced this year as “Cycles!”

“Engineering doesn’t move in a straight line,” Hosoi elaborated. “It loops, it resets, accelerates, and builds momentum, just like our students.” She continued, “Tonight, we’re celebrating the energy, grit, and creativity that comes from embracing those cycles.”

Starting with ideation, the teams ventured out to talk to people from a variety of walks of life and uncover what Hosoi referred to as “exciting problems worth solving.” From there — with mentors, access to makerspaces, and a budget to turn their ideas into working products — the teams, each represented by a color, spent 13 weeks designing, building, and drafting a business plan for their product.

Spectators packed Kresge Auditorium on Dec. 8, waiving colorful pompoms and cheering on the teams, with thousands more watching online. The six teams demonstrated their prototypes and shared business plans, with breaks between presentations featuring dance and musical performances by MIT Ridonkulous, MIT Ohms, and MIT Live, and short animated films created by the 2.009 team which, this year, incorporated popular movie references.

A recording of the event livestream is available on the 2.009 website, which includes full demonstrations of the product prototypes discussed below, along with audience questions.

Green Team

In the United States, some 350,000 people suffer cardiac arrest each year. Immediate intervention by bystanders can be the difference between life and death. The Green Team presented HeartBridge, an automated CPR device.

“For every minute someone who needs it goes without effective CPR, their chance of survival decreases by roughly 10 percent,” Green Team presenters told the audience. But, they added, CPR is exhausting at the recommended speed and compression depth, with research showing decreases in effectiveness of manual compressions after just three minutes.

HeartBridge is a durable mechanical device that administers steady compressions to a patient and provides textual, visual, and auditory cues to users.

Purple Team

The Purple Team painted the picture of a quintessential fall activity in New England, inviting the audience to imagine “it’s a beautiful Saturday in October, and you decide to go apple picking.” At family-run orchards, thousands of apples fall to the ground each season, creating more than just a mess. Rotting apples invite pests or can spread fungus, decreasing crop yield.

AgriSweep, the Purple Team’s prototype, is a hydraulic powered tractor attachment that collects fallen apples into a produce bin, saving time and labor costs, decreasing the need for sprays, and potentially generating revenue for farmers who sell the windfalls for hard cider, livestock feed, or compost.

Nodding to the video references punctuating the show, the team closed their presentation with a reference to an iconic film with an MIT connection: “How do you like them apples?”

Red Team

Hand embroidery is a popular pastime, but drawing or transferring patterns can be time-consuming or messy. The Red Team aims to solve this problem with their product, Scribbly, a “user-friendly and software-free printer” designed to let hobbyists to create their own designs and make transfers easier.

The machine, which can accommodate a variety of fabrics and embroidery hoop sizes up to 10 inches in diameter, reads design files from a USB, then transfers the image via a pen that can be “erased” with heat if the user wants to change the design.

To demonstrate their product, the team created a transfer pattern of the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering logo.

Blue Team

Boating safety was top-of-mind for the Blue Team. Propeller-related injuries are a big concern for recreational boaters. Fixed propeller guards, or prop guards, are the most common solution but have drawbacks, including reducing fuel efficiency and decreasing maneuverability. DORI, the Blue Team prototype, is a deployable prop guard that is stowed above the waterline and can be lowered into place when needed.

Yellow Team

The Yellow Team tackled a problem faced by “pond skating enthusiasts and people who maintain their own backyard rinks,” namely, rough patches, bumps, and uneven ice. Their product, Polar, is a compact device that smooths out backyard surfaces to improve skate-ability.

The system includes a chassis on a welded steel frame with a motorized drivetrain, a cutter to shave the ice surface, and an onboard water distribution system with heating mechanism and drip bar for resurfacing.

Pink Team

The final team of the night, the Pink Team, conquered a challenge rooted in one of the most demanding and real-world contexts: rescue diving. In a drowning emergency, rescue divers have just minutes to save a life. Using a retractable strap, carabiner, and locking mechanism, the Pink Team’s product, HydroHold, attaches directly to a diver’s buoyancy control device and offers a hands-free way to secure a drowning victim during a rescue mission.

The product was developed following consultations with divers from local fire departments, the state police, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “When we took these prototypes to rescue divers, we heard them ask for two things over and over,” the presenters said. “Something simple, and something safe.”

Rather than choosing complexity, Hosoi told the audience, the Pink Team pursued refinement. “They kept testing with users, shaping the interface, and polishing the details until everything felt natural.”

Wiesman added that the product is a reminder that “powerful engineering isn’t about flashy things … sometimes it’s about reducing friction, elevating usability, and building something that just works when it matters.”

Thank you and goodnight

The night ended with a final “thank you” song celebrating the products, the teams, and all the contributors who make the class possible because, as Hosoi said, “It really does take a team to make this class ‘cycle’ forward.” 

The clever AI-generated tribute, which weaves in the names of class participants and instructors, while rhyming “pizza with pepperoni” and “pond-sized Zamboni,” can also be watched in its entirety at the end of the livestream recording, following the product demonstrations. 

Every autumn, as the Northern Hemisphere moves toward winter, Judah Cohen starts to piece together a complex atmospheric puzzle. Cohen, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), has spent decades studying how conditions in the Arctic set the course for winter weather throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. His research dates back to his postdoctoral work with Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor Dara Entekhabi that looked at snow cover in the Siberian region and its connection with winter forecasting.

Cohen’s outlook for the 2025–26 winter highlights a season characterized by indicators emerging from the Arctic using a new generation of artificial intelligence tools that help develop the full atmospheric picture.

Looking beyond the usual climate drivers

Winter forecasts rely heavily on El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) diagnostics, which are the tropical Pacific Ocean and atmosphere conditions that influence weather around the world. However, Cohen notes that ENSO is relatively weak this year.

“When ENSO is weak, that’s when climate indicators from the Arctic becomes especially important,” Cohen says.

Cohen monitors high-latitude diagnostics in his subseasonal forecasting, such as October snow cover in Siberia, early-season temperature changes, Arctic sea-ice extent, and the stability of the polar vortex. “These indicators can tell a surprisingly detailed story about the upcoming winter,” he says. 

One of Cohen’s most consistent data predictors is October’s weather in Siberia. This year, when the Northern Hemisphere experienced an unusually warm October, Siberia was colder than normal with an early snow fall. “Cold temperatures paired with early snow cover tend to strengthen the formation of cold air masses that can later spill into Europe and North America,” says Cohen — weather patterns that are historically linked to more frequent cold spells later in winter.

Warm ocean temperatures in the Barents–Kara Sea and an “easterly” phase of the quasi-biennial oscillation also suggest a potentially weaker polar vortex in early winter. When this disturbance couples with surface conditions in December, it leads to lower-than-normal temperatures across parts of Eurasia and North America earlier in the season.

AI subseasonal forecasting

While AI weather models have made impressive strides showcasing in short-range (one-to–10-day) forecasts, these advances have not yet applied to longer periods. The subseasonal prediction covering two to six weeks remains one of the toughest challenges in the field.

That gap is why this year could be a turning point for subseasonal weather forecasting. A team of researchers working with Cohen won first place for the fall season in the 2025 AI WeatherQuest subseasonal forecasting competition, held by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The challenge evaluates how well AI models capture temperature patterns over multiple weeks, where forecasting has been historically limited.

The winning model combined machine-learning pattern recognition with the same Arctic diagnostics Cohen has refined over decades. The system demonstrated significant gains in multi-week forecasting, surpassing leading AI and statistical baselines.

“If this level of performance holds across multiple seasons, it could represent a real step forward for subseasonal prediction,” Cohen says

The model also detected a potential cold surge in mid-December for the U.S. East Coast much earlier than usual, weeks before such signals typically arise. The forecast was widely publicized in the media in real-time. If validated, Cohen explains, it would show how combining Arctic indicators with AI could extend the lead time for predicting impactful weather.

“Flagging a potential extreme event three to four weeks in advance would be a watershed moment,” he adds. “It would give utilities, transportation systems, and public agencies more time to prepare.”

What this winter may hold

Cohen’s model shows a greater chance of colder-than-normal conditions across parts of Eurasia and central North America later in the winter, with the strongest anomalies likely mid-season.

“We’re still early, and patterns can shift,” Cohen says. “But the ingredients for a colder winter pattern are there.”

As Arctic warming speeds up, its impact on winter behavior is becoming more evident, making it increasingly important to understand these connections for energy planning, transportation, and public safety. Cohen’s work shows that the Arctic holds untapped subseasonal forecasting power, and AI may help unlock it for time frames that have long been challenging for traditional models.

In November, Cohen even appeared as a clue in The Washington Post crossword, a small sign of how widely his research has entered public conversations about winter weather.

“For me, the Arctic has always been the place to watch,” he says. “Now AI is giving us new ways to interpret its signals.”

Cohen will continue to update his outlook throughout the season on his blog.

At MIT, a strong spirit of mentorship shapes how students learn, collaborate, and imagine the future. In a time of accelerating change — from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence to the evolving realities of global research and work — guidance for technical challenges and personal growth is more important than ever. 

The Committed to Caring (C2C) program recognizes the outstanding professors who extend this dedication beyond the classroom, nurturing resilience, curiosity, and compassion in a new generation of innovators. The latest cohort of C2C honorees exemplify these values, demonstrating the lasting impact that faculty can have on students’ academic and personal journeys.

The Committed to Caring program is a student-driven initiative that has celebrated exceptional mentorship since 2014. In this cycle, 18 MIT professors have been selected as recipients of the C2C award for 2025-27, joining the ranks of nearly 100 previous honorees. 

The following faculty members comprise the 2025-27 Committed to Caring cohort:

• Iwnetim Abate, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
• Abdullah Almaatouq, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Marc A. Baldo, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Anantha P. Chandrakasan, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Anna-Christina Eilers, Department of Physics
• Herbert Einstein, Department of Civil and Environment Engineering
• Dennis M. Freeman, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Daniel Hidalgo, Department of Political Science
• Erin Kara, Department of Physics
• Laura Lewis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Lina Necib, Department of Physics
• Sara Prescott, Department of Biology
• Ellen Roche, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Loza Tadesse, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Haruko Murakami Wainwright, Department of Nuclear Science
• Fan Wang, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Forest White, Department of Biological Engineering
• Bin Zhang, Department of Chemistry

Since its launch, the C2C program has placed students at the heart of its nomination process. Graduate students across all departments are invited to share letters recognizing faculty whose mentorship has made a lasting impact on their academic and personal journeys. A selection committee, consisting of both graduate students and staff, reviews nominations to identify those who have meaningfully strengthened the graduate community at MIT.

The selection committee this year included: Zoë Wright (Office of Graduate Education, or OGE), Ryan Rideau, Elizabeth Guttenberg (OGE), Beth Marois (OGE), Sharikka Finley-Moise (OGE), Indrani Saha (History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture, OGE), Chen Liang (graduate student, MIT Sloan School of Management), Jasmine Aloor (grad student, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Leila Hudson (grad student, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science), and Chair Suraiya Baluch (OGE).

“I wanted to be part of this committee after nominating my own professor in the last cycle, and the experience has been incredibly meaningful,” says Aloor. “I was continually amazed by the ways that so many professors show deep care for their students behind the scenes … What stood out to me most was the breadth of ways these faculty members support their students, check in on them, provide mentorship, and cultivate lifelong bonds, despite being successful and pressed for time as leaders at the top Institute in the world.”

Guttenberg agrees, saying, “Even when these gestures appear simple, they leave a profound and lasting impact on students’ lives and help cultivate the thriving academic community we value.”

Nomination letters illustrate how the efforts of these MIT faculty reflect a deep and enduring commitment to their students’ growth, well-being, and sense of purpose. Their advisees praise these educators for their consistent impact beyond lectures and labs, and for fostering inclusion, support, and genuine connection. Their care and guidance cultivates spaces where students are encouraged not only to excel academically, but also to develop confidence, balance, and a clearer vision of their goals.

Liang underlined that the selection experience “has shown me how many faculty at MIT … help students grow into thoughtful, independent researchers and, just as importantly, into fuller versions of themselves in the world.”

In the months ahead, a series of articles will showcase the honorees in pairs, with a reception this April to recognize their lasting impact. By highlighting these faculty, the Committed to Caring program continues to celebrate and strengthen MIT’s culture of mentorship, respect, and collaboration. 

Leaders of many organizations are urging their teams to adopt agentic AI to improve efficiency, but are finding it hard to achieve any benefit. Managers attempting to add AI agents to existing human teams may find that bots fail to faithfully follow their instructions, return pointless or obvious results or burn precious time and resources spinning on tasks that older, simpler systems could have accomplished just as well.

The technical innovators getting the most out of AI are finding that the technology can be remarkably human in its behavior. And the more groups of AI agents are given tasks that require cooperation and collaboration, the more those human-like dynamics emerge...

The New York offshore wind project, which is 60 percent complete, said it will likely never be built if construction isn’t restarted by Jan. 16.

Researchers catalogued the most costly U.S. storms, wildfires and floods after the Trump administration halted a federal database last year.

Although most permits are sold at quarterly government auctions, a secondary market enables daily transactions similar to a stock market.

The criticism comes as the administration moves toward finalizing CAFE standards that would make vehicles less efficient in 2031 than they are today.

State Sen. Steve Padilla introduced the bill on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles wildfires.

The stalled progress comes as a disappointing reversal after the gains achieved in the first few years following the launch of the city's Climate Smart plan in 2018.

Expected to open in early 2026, it will become the only bridge from Michigan to Canada that allows for foot and bike traffic, joining just a few other U.S.-Canadian crossings with pedestrian lanes.

According to the government, the foreign funds Harjeet Singh is suspected of receiving were intended to promote the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty.

The country’s overall emissions fell by 9 million tons to 640 million, with higher pollution from the building and transport sectors slowing down overall progress.

In an advance that could help ensure people are taking their medication on schedule, MIT engineers have designed a pill that can report when it has been swallowed.

The new reporting system, which can be incorporated into existing pill capsules, contains a biodegradable radio frequency antenna. After it sends out the signal that the pill has been consumed, most components break down in the stomach while a tiny RF chip passes out of the body through the digestive tract.

This type of system could be useful for monitoring transplant patients who need to take immunosuppressive drugs, or people with infections such as HIV or TB, who need treatment for an extended period of time, the researchers say.

“The goal is to make sure that this helps people receive the therapy they need to help maximize their health,” says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Traverso is the senior author of the new study, which appears today in Nature Communications. Mehmet Girayhan Say, an MIT research scientist, and Sean You, a former MIT postdoc, are the lead authors of the paper.

A pill that communicates

Patients’ failure to take their medicine as prescribed is a major challenge that contributes to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and billions of dollars in health care costs annually.

To make it easier for people to take their medication, Traverso’s lab has worked on delivery capsules that can remain in the digestive tract for days or weeks, releasing doses at predetermined times. However, this approach may not be compatible with all drugs.

“We’ve developed systems that can stay in the body for a long time, and we know that those systems can improve adherence, but we also recognize that for certain medications, we can’t change the pill,” Traverso says. “The question becomes: What else can we do to help the person and help their health care providers ensure that they’re receiving the medication?”

In their new study, the researchers focused on a strategy that would allow doctors to more closely monitor whether patients are taking their medication. Using radio frequency — a type of signal that can be easily detected from outside the body and is safe for humans — they designed a capsule that can communicate after the patient has swallowed it.

There have been previous efforts to develop RF-based signaling devices for medication capsules, but those were all made from components that don’t break down easily in the body and would need to travel through the digestive system.

To minimize the potential risk of any blockage of the GI tract, the MIT team decided to create an RF-based system that would be bioresorbable, meaning that it can be broken down and absorbed by the body. The antenna that sends out the RF signal is made from zinc, and it is embedded into a cellulose particle.

“We chose these materials recognizing their very favorable safety profiles and also environmental compatibility,” Traverso says.

The zinc-cellulose antenna is rolled up and placed inside a capsule along with the drug to be delivered. The outer layer of the capsule is made from gelatin coated with a layer of cellulose and either molybdenum or tungsten, which blocks any RF signal from being emitted.

Once the capsule is swallowed, the coating breaks down, releasing the drug along with the RF antenna. The antenna can then pick up an RF signal sent from an external receiver and, working with a small RF chip, sends back a signal to confirm that the capsule was swallowed. This communication happens within 10 minutes of the pill being swallowed.

The RF chip, which is about 400 by 400 micrometers, is an off-the-shelf chip that is not biodegradable and would need to be excreted through the digestive tract. All of the other components would break down in the stomach within a week.

“The components are designed to break down over days using materials with well-established safety profiles, such as zinc and cellulose, which are already widely used in medicine,” Say says. “Our goal is to avoid long-term accumulation while enabling reliable confirmation that a pill was taken, and longer-term safety will continue to be evaluated as the technology moves toward clinical use.”

Promoting adherence

Tests in an animal model showed that the RF signal was successfully transmitted from inside the stomach and could be read by an external receiver at a distance up to 2 feet away. If developed for use in humans, the researchers envision designing a wearable device that could receive the signal and then transmit it to the patient’s health care team.

The researchers now plan to do further preclinical studies and hope to soon test the system in humans. One patient population that could benefit greatly from this type of monitoring is people who have recently had organ transplants and need to take immunosuppressant drugs to make sure their body doesn’t reject the new organ.

“We want to prioritize medications that, when non-adherence is present, could have a really detrimental effect for the individual,” Traverso says.

Other populations that could benefit include people who have recently had a stent inserted and need to take medication to help prevent blockage of the stent, people with chronic infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, and people with neuropsychiatric disorders whose conditions may impair their ability to take their medication.

The research was funded by Novo Nordisk, MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Division of Gastroenterology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which notes that the views and conclusions contained in this article are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the United States Government.

This work was carried out, in part, through the use of MIT.nano’s facilities.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 08 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02526-4

Although climate action is undermined by political interests and institutional inertia, multiple safeguards are in place to prevent backsliding on progress so far, and positive feedbacks reinforce progress despite opposing forces. Key elements of climate action are irreversible and can be further strengthened by commitments, investments and positive narratives.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 08 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02521-9

Advanced monsoon onset prediction with multi-week lead time via an artificial intelligence (AI) weather model helps smallholder farmers adapt to a changing climate.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 08 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02546-0

Climate action clearly needs greater ambition in the face of increasing physical, biological and social impacts. However, it is important to acknowledge successes, including safeguards that protect action so far, and there are initiatives being implemented across scales that are effective.

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change underpins global efforts to address rising temperatures.

For decades, scientists with big questions about biology have found answers in a tiny worm. That worm — a millimeter-long creature called Caenorhabditis elegans — has helped researchers uncover fundamental features of how cells and organisms work. The impact of that work is enormous: Discoveries made using C. elegans have been recognized with four Nobel Prizes and have led to the development of new treatments for human disease.

In a perspective piece published in the November 2025 issue of the journal PNAS, 11 biologists including Robert Horvitz, the David H. Koch (1962) Professor of Biology at MIT, celebrate Nobel Prize-winning advances made through research in C. elegans. The authors discuss how that work has led to advances for human health, and highlight how a uniquely collaborative community among worm researchers has fueled the field.

MIT scientists are well represented in that community: The prominent worm biologists who coauthored the PNAS paper include former MIT graduate students Andrew Fire PhD ’83 and Paul Sternberg PhD ’84, now at Stanford University and Caltech, respectively; and two past members of Horvitz’s lab, Victor Ambros ’75, PhD ’79, who is now at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and former postdoc Gary Ruvkun of Massachusetts General Hospital. Ann Rougvie at the University of Minnesota is the paper’s corresponding author.

“This tiny worm is beautiful — elegant both in its appearance and in its many contributions to our understanding of the biological universe in which we live,” says Horvitz, who in 2002 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with colleagues Sydney Brenner and John Sulston, for discoveries that helped explain how genes regulate programmed cell death and organ development. 

Early worm discoveries

Those discoveries were among the early successes in C. elegans research, made by pioneering scientists who recognized the power of the microscopic roundworm. C. elegans offers many advantages for researchers: The worms are easy to grow and maintain in labs; their transparent bodies make cells and internal processes readily visible under a microscope; they are cellularly very simple (e.g., they have only 302 nerve cells, compared with about 100 billion in a human) and their genomes can be readily manipulated to study gene function.

Most importantly, many of the molecules and processes that operate in C. elegans have been retained throughout evolution, meaning discoveries made using the worm can have direct relevance to other organisms, including humans. 

“Many aspects of biology are ancient and evolutionarily conserved,” Horvitz, who is also a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, as well as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “Such shared mechanisms can be most readily revealed by analyzing organisms that are highly tractable in the laboratory.”

In the 1960s, Brenner, a molecular biologist who was curious about how animals’ nervous systems develop and function, recognized that C. elegans offered unique opportunities to study these processes. Once he began developing the worm into a model for laboratory studies, it did not take long for other biologists to join him to take advantage of the new system.

In the 1970s, the unique features of the worm allowed Sulston to track the transformation of a fertilized egg into an adult animal, tracing the origins of each of the adult worm’s 959 cells. His studies revealed that in every developing worm, cells divide and mature in predictable ways. He also learned that some of the cells created during development do not survive into adulthood, and are instead eliminated by a process termed programmed cell death.

By seeking mutations that perturbed the process of programmed cell death, Horvitz and his colleagues identified key regulators of that process, which is sometimes referred to as apoptosis. These regulators, which both promote and oppose apoptosis, turned out to be vital for programmed cell death across the animal kingdom.

In humans, apoptosis shapes developing organs, refines brain circuits, and optimizes other tissue structures. It also modulates our immune systems and eliminates cells that are in danger of becoming cancerous. The human version of CED-9, the anti-apoptotic regulator that Horvitz’s team discovered in worms, is BCL-2. Researchers have shown that activating apoptotic cell death by blocking BCL-2 is an effective treatment for certain blood cancers. Today, researchers are also exploring new ways of treating immune disorders and neurodegenerative disease by manipulating apoptosis pathways.

Collaborative worm community

Horvitz and his colleagues’ discoveries about apoptosis helped demonstrate that understanding C. elegans biology has direct relevance to human biology and disease. Since then, a vibrant and closely connected community of worm biologists — including many who trained in Horvitz’s lab — has continued to carry out impactful work. In their PNAS article, Horvitz and his coauthors highlight that early work, as well as the Nobel Prize-winning work of:

• Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, whose discovery of an RNA-based system of gene silencing led to powerful new tools to manipulate gene activity. The innate process they discovered in worms, known as RNA interference, is now used as the basis of six FDA-approved therapeutics for genetic disorders, silencing faulty genes to stop their harmful effects.
• Martin Chalfie, who used a fluorescent protein made by jellyfish to visualize and track specific cells in C. elegans, helping launch the development of a set of tools that transformed biologists’ ability to observe molecules and processes that are important for both health and disease.
• Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun, who discovered a class of molecules called microRNAs that regulate gene activity not just in worms, but in all multicellular organisms. This prize-winning work was started when Ambros and Ruvkun were postdocs in Horvitz’s lab. Humans rely on more than 1,000 microRNAs to ensure our genes are used at the right times and places. Disruptions to microRNAs have been linked to neurological disorders, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune disease, and researchers are now exploring how these small molecules might be used for diagnosis or treatment.

Horvitz and his coauthors stress that while the worm itself made these discoveries possible, so too did a host of resources that facilitate collaboration within the worm community and enable its scientists to build upon the work of others. Scientists who study C. elegans have embraced this open, collaborative spirit since the field’s earliest days, Horvitz says, citing the Worm Breeder’s Gazette, an early newsletter where scientists shared their observations, methods, and ideas.

Today, scientists who study C. elegans — whether the organism is the centerpiece of their lab or they are looking to supplement studies of other systems — contribute to and rely on online resources like WormAtlas and WormBase, as well as the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center, to share data and genetic tools. Horvitz says these resources have been crucial to his own lab’s work; his team uses them every day.

Just as molecules and processes discovered in C. elegans have pointed researchers toward important pathways in human cells, the worm has also been a vital proving ground for developing methods and approaches later deployed to study more complex organisms. For example, C. elegans, with its 302 neurons, was the first animal for which neuroscientists successfully mapped all of the connections of the nervous system. The resulting wiring diagram, or connectome, has guided countless experiments exploring how neurons work together to process information and control behavior. Informed by both the power and limitations of the C. elegans’ connectome, scientists are now mapping more complex circuitry, such as the 139,000-neuron brain of the fruit fly, whose connectome was completed in 2024.

C. elegans remains a mainstay of biological research, including in neuroscience. Scientists worldwide are using the worm to explore new questions about neural circuits, neurodegeneration, development, and disease. Horvitz’s lab continues to turn to C. elegans to investigate the genes that control animal development and behavior. His team is now using the worm to explore how animals develop a sense of time and transmit that information to their offspring.

Also at MIT, Steven Flavell’s team in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory is using the worm to investigate how neural connectivity, activity, and modulation integrate internal states, such as hunger, with sensory information, such as the smell of food, to produce sometimes long-lasting behaviors. (Flavell is Horvitz’s academic grandson, as Flavell trained with one of Horvitz’s postdoctoral trainees.)

As new technologies accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, Horvitz and his colleagues are confident that the humble worm will bring more unexpected insights.