Author: MIT News

Workshop explores new advanced materials for a growing world

by Elizabeth A. Thomson | Materials Research Laboratory |

It is clear that humankind needs increasingly more resources, from computing power to steel and concrete, to meet the growing demands associated with data centers, infrastructure, and other mainstays of society. New, cost-effective approaches for producing the advanced materials key to that growth were the focus of a two-day workshop at MIT on March 11 and 12.

A theme throughout the event was the importance of collaboration between and within universities and industries. The goal is to “develop concepts that everybody can use together, instead of everybody doing something different and then trying to sort it out later at great cost,” said Lionel Kimerling, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.

The workshop was produced by MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), which has an industry collegium, and MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program.

The program included an address by Javier Sanfelix, lead of the Advanced Materials Team for the European Union. Sanfelix gave an overview of the EU’s strategy to developing advanced materials, which he said are “key enablers of the green and digital transition for European industry.”

That strategy has already led to several initiatives. These include a material commons, or shared digital infrastructure for the design and development of advanced materials, and an advanced materials academy for educating new innovators and designers. Sanfelix also described an Advanced Materials Act for 2026 that aims to put in place a legislative framework that supports the entire innovation cycle.

Sanfelix was visiting MIT to learn more about how the Institute is approaching the future of advanced materials. “We see MIT as a leader worldwide in technology, especially on materials, and there is a lot to learn about [your] industry collaborations and technology transfer with industry,” he said.

Innovations in steel and concrete

The workshop began with talks about innovations involving two of the most common human-made materials in the world: steel and cement. We’ll need more of both but must reckon with the huge amounts of energy required to produce them and their impact on the environment due to greenhouse-gas emissions during that production.

One way to address our need for more steel is to reuse what we have, said C. Cem Tasan, the POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and director of the Materials Research Laboratory.

But most of the existing approaches to recycling scrap steel involve melting the metal. “And whenever you are dealing with molten metal, everything goes up, from energy use to carbon-dioxide emissions. Life is more difficult,” Tasan said.

The question he and his team asked is whether they could reuse scrap steel without melting it. Could they consolidate solid scraps, then roll them together using existing equipment to create new sheet metal? From the materials-science perspective, Tasan said, that shouldn’t work, for several reasons.

But it does. “We’ve demonstrated the potential in two papers and two patent applications already,” he said. Tasan noted that the approach focuses on high-quality manufacturing scrap. “This is not junkyard scrap,” he said.

Tasan went on to explain how and why the new process works from a materials-science perspective, then gave examples of how the recycled steel could be used. “My favorite example is the stainless-steel countertops in restaurants. Do you really need the mechanical performance of stainless steel there?” You could use the recycled steel instead.

Hessam Azarijafari addressed another common, indispensable material: concrete. This year marks the 16th anniversary of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), which began when a set of industry leaders and politicians reached out to MIT to learn more about the benefits and environmental impacts of concrete.

The hub’s work now centers around three main themes: working toward a carbon-neutral concrete industry; the development of a sustainable infrastructure, with a focus on pavement; and how to make our cities more resilient to natural hazards through investment in stronger, cooler construction.

Azarijafari, the deputy director of the CSHub, went on to give several examples of research results that have come out of the CSHub. These include many models to identify different pathways to decarbonize the cement and concrete sector. Other work involves pavements, which the general public thinks of as inert, Azarijafari said. “But we have [created] a state-of-the-art model that can assess interactions between pavement and vehicles.” It turns out that pavement surface characteristics and structural performance “can influence excess fuel consumption by inducing an additional rolling resistance.”

Azarijafari emphasized  the importance of working closely with policymakers and industry. That engagement is key “to sharing the lessons that we have learned so far.”

Toward a resource-efficient microchip industry

Consider the following: In 2020 the number of cell phones, GPS units, and other devices connected to the “cloud,” or large data centers, exceeded 50 billion. And data-center traffic in turn is scaling by 1,000 times every 10 years.

But all of that computation takes energy. And “all of it has to happen at a constant cost of energy, because the gross domestic product isn’t changing at that rate,” said Kimerling. The solution is to either produce much more energy, or make information technology much more energy-efficient. Several speakers at the workshop focused on the materials and components behind the latter.

Key to everything they discussed: adding photonics, or using light to carry information, to the well-established electronics behind today’s microchips. “The bottom line is that integrating photonics with electronics in the same package is the transistor for the 21st century. If we can’t figure out how to do that, then we’re not going to be able to scale forward,” said Kimerling, who is director of the MIT Microphotonics Center.

MIT has long been a leader in the integration of photonics with electronics. For example, Kimerling described the Integrated Photonics System Roadmap – International (IPSR-I), a global network of more than 400 industrial and R&D partners working together to define and create photonic integrated circuit technology. IPSR-I is led by the MIT Microphotonics Center and PhotonDelta. Kimerling began the organization in 1997.

Last year IPSR-I released its latest roadmap for photonics-electronics integration, “which  outlines a clear way forward and specifies an innovative learning curve for scaling performance and applications for the next 15 years,” Kimerling said.

Another major MIT program focused on the future of the microchip industry is FUTUR-IC, a new global alliance for sustainable microchip manufacturing. Begun last year, FUTUR-IC is funded by the National Science Foundation.

“Our goal is to build a resource-efficient microchip industry value chain,” said Anuradha Murthy Agarwal, a principal research scientist at the MRL and leader of FUTUR-IC. That includes all of the elements that go into manufacturing future microchips, including workforce education and techniques to mitigate potential environmental effects.

FUTUR-IC is also focused on electronic-photonic integration. “My mantra is to use electronics for computation, [and] shift to photonics for communication to bring this energy crisis in control,” Agarwal said.

But integrating electronic chips with photonic chips is not easy. To that end, Agarwal described some of the challenges involved. For example, currently it is difficult to connect the optical fibers carrying communications to a microchip. That’s because the alignment between the two must be almost perfect or the light will disperse. And the dimensions involved are minuscule. An optical fiber has a diameter of only millionths of a meter. As a result, today each connection must be actively tested with a laser to ensure that the light will come through.

That said, Agarwal went on to describe a new coupler between the fiber and chip that could solve the problem and allow robots to passively assemble the chips (no laser needed). The work, which was conducted by researchers including MIT graduate student Drew Wenninger, Agarwal, and Kimerling, has been patented, and is reported in two papers. A second recent breakthrough in this area involving a printed micro-reflector was described by Juejun “JJ” Hu, John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

FUTUR-IC is also leading educational efforts for training a future workforce, as well as techniques for detecting — and potentially destroying — the perfluroalkyls (PFAS, or “forever chemicals”) released during microchip manufacturing. FUTUR-IC educational efforts, including virtual reality and game-based learning, were described by Sajan Saini, education director for FUTUR-IC. PFAS detection and remediation were discussed by Aristide Gumyusenge, an assistant professor in DMSE, and Jesus Castro Esteban, a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry.

Other presenters at the workshop included Antoine Allanore, the Heather N. Lechtman Professor of Materials Science and Engineering; Katrin Daehn, a postdoc in the Allanore lab; Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas (1923) and Helen Whitaker Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Richard Otte, CEO of Promex; and Carl Thompson, the Stavros V. Salapatas Professor in Materials Science and Engineering.

A chemist who tinkers with molecules’ structures

by Anne Trafton | MIT News |

Many biological molecules exist as “diastereomers” — molecules that have the same chemical structure but different spatial arrangements of their atoms. In some cases, these slight structural differences can lead to significant changes in the molecules’ functions or chemical properties.

As one example, the cancer drug doxorubicin can have heart-damaging side effects in a small percentage of patients. However, a diastereomer of the drug, known as epirubicin, which has a single alcohol group that points in a different direction, is much less toxic to heart cells.

“There are a lot of examples like that in medicinal chemistry where something that seems small, such as the position of a single atom in space, may actually be really profound,” says Alison Wendlandt, an associate professor of chemistry at MIT.

Wendlandt’s lab is focused on designing new tools that can convert these molecules into different forms.  Her group is also working on similar tools that can change a molecule into a different constitutional isomer — a molecule that has an atom or chemical group located in a different spot, even though it has the same chemical formula as the original.

“If you have a target molecule and you needed to make it without such a tool, you would have to go back to the beginning and make the whole molecule again to get to the final structure that you wanted,” Wendlandt says.

These tools can also lend themselves to creating entirely new molecules that might be difficult or even impossible to build using traditional chemical synthesis techniques.

“We’re focused on a broad suite of selective transformations, the goal being to make the biggest impact on how you might envision making a molecule,” she says. “If you are able to open up access to the interconversion of molecular structures, you can then think completely differently about how you would make a molecule.”

From math to chemistry

As the daughter of two geologists, Wendlandt found herself immersed in science from a young age. Both of her parents worked at the Colorado School of Mines, and family vacations often involved trips to interesting geological formations.

In high school, she found math more appealing than chemistry, and she headed to the University of Chicago with plans to major in mathematics. However, she soon had second thoughts, after encountering abstract math.

“I was good at calculus and the kind of math you need for engineering, but when I got to college and I encountered topology and N-dimensional geometry, I realized I don’t actually have the skills for abstract math. At that point I became a little bit more open-minded about what I wanted to study,” she says.

Though she didn’t think she liked chemistry, an organic chemistry course in her sophomore year changed her mind.

“I loved the problem-solving aspect of it. I have a very, very bad memory, and I couldn’t memorize my way through the class, so I had to just learn it, and that was just so fun,” she says.

As a chemistry major, she began working in a lab focused on “total synthesis,” a research area that involves developing strategies to synthesize a complex molecule, often a natural compound, from scratch.

Although she loved organic chemistry, a lab accident — an explosion that injured a student in her lab and led to temporary hearing loss for Wendlandt — made her hesitant to pursue it further. When she applied to graduate schools, she decided to go into a different branch of chemistry — chemical biology. She studied at Yale University for a couple of years, but she realized that she didn’t enjoy that type of chemistry and left after receiving a master’s degree.

She worked in a lab at the University of Kentucky for a few years, then applied to graduate school again, this time at the University of Wisconsin. There, she worked in an organic chemistry lab, studying oxidation reactions that could be used to generate pharmaceuticals or other useful compounds from petrochemicals.

After finishing her PhD in 2015, Wendlandt went to Harvard University for a postdoc, working with chemistry professor Eric Jacobsen. There, she became interested in selective chemical reactions that generate a particular isomer, and began studying catalysts that could perform glycosylation — the addition of sugar molecules to other molecules — at specific sites.

Editing molecules

Since joining the MIT faculty in 2018, Wendlandt has worked on developing catalysts that can convert a molecule into its mirror image or an isomer of the original.

In 2022, she and her students developed a tool called a stereo-editor, which can alter the arrangement of chemical groups around a central atom known as a stereocenter. This editor consists of two catalysts that work together to first add enough energy to remove an atom from a stereocenter, then replace it with an atom that has the opposite orientation. That energy input comes from a photocatalyst, which converts captured light into energy.

“If you have a molecule with an existing stereocenter, and you need the other enantiomer, typically you would have to start over and make the other enantiomer. But this new method tries to interconvert them directly, so it gives you a way of thinking about molecules as dynamic,” Wendlandt says. “You could generate any sort of three-dimensional structure of that molecule, and then in an independent step later, you could completely reorganize the 3D structure.”

She has also developed tools that can convert common sugars such as glucose into other isomers, including allose and other sugars that are difficult to isolate from natural sources, and tools that can create new isomers of steroids and alcohols. She is now working on ways to convert six-membered carbon rings to seven or eight-membered rings, and to add, subtract, or replace some of the chemical groups attached to the rings.

“I’m interested in creating general tools that will allow us to interconvert static structures. So, that may be taking a certain functional group and moving it to another part of the molecule entirely, or taking large rings and making them small rings,” she says. “Instead of thinking of molecules that we assemble as static, we’re thinking about them now as potentially dynamic structures, which could change how we think about making organic molecules.”

This approach also opens up the possibility of creating brand new molecules that haven’t been seen before, Wendlandt says. This could be useful, for example, to create drug molecules that interact with a target enzyme in just the right way.

“There’s a huge amount of chemical space that’s still unknown, bizarre chemical space that just has not been made. That’s in part because maybe no one has been interested in it, or because it’s just too hard to make that specific thing,” she says. “These kinds of tools give you access to isomers that are maybe not easily made.”

Four from MIT awarded 2025 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

by Julia Mongo | Office of Distinguished Fellowships |

MIT graduate students Sreekar Mantena and Arjun Ramani, and recent MIT alumni Rupert Li ’24 and Jupneet Singh ’23, have been named 2025 P.D. Soros Fellows. In addition, Soros Fellow Andre Ye will begin a PhD in computer science at MIT this fall.

Each year, the P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans awards 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants $90,000 in graduate school financial support over a two-year period. The merit-based program selects fellows based on their achievements, potential to make meaningful contributions to their fields and communities, and dedication to the ideals of the United States represented in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. This year’s fellows were selected from a competitive pool of more than 2,600 applicants nationwide.

Rupert Li ’24

The son of Chinese immigrants, Rupert Li was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from MIT in 2024 with a double major in mathematics and computer science, economics, and data science, and earned an MEng in the latter subject.

Li was named a Marshall Scholar in 2023 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in the Part III mathematics program at Cambridge University. His P.D. Soros Fellowship will support his pursuit of a PhD in mathematics at Stanford University.

Li’s first experience with mathematics research was as a high school student participant in the MIT PRIMES-USA program. He continued research in mathematics as an undergraduate at MIT, where he worked with professors Henry Cohn, Nike Sun, and Elchanan Mossel in the Department of Mathematics. Li also spent two summers at the Duluth REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program with Professor Joe Gallian.

Li’s research in probability, discrete geometry, and combinatorics culminated in him receiving the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, an honorable mention for the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student, the Marshall Scholarship, and the Hertz Fellowship.

Beyond research, Li finds fulfillment in opportunities to give back to the math community that has supported him throughout his mathematical journey. This year marks the second time he has served as a graduate student mentor for the PRIMES-USA program, which sparked his mathematical career, and his first year as an advisor for the Duluth REU program.

Sreekar Mantena

Sreekar Mantena graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with a degree in statistics and molecular biology. He is currently an MD student in biomedical informatics in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), where he works under Professor Soumya Raychaudhuri of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is also pursuing a PhD in bioinformatics and integrative genomics at Harvard Medical School. In the future, Mantena hopes to blend compassion with computation as a physician-scientist who harnesses the power of machine learning and statistics to advance equitable health care delivery.

The son of Indian-American immigrants, Mantena was raised in North Carolina, where he grew up as fond of cheese grits as of his mother’s chana masala. Every summer of his childhood, he lived with his grandparents in Southern India, who instilled in him the importance of investing in one’s community and a love of learning.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, Mantena was inspired by the potential of statistics and data science to address gaps in health-care delivery. He founded the Global Alliance for Medical Innovation, a nonprofit organization that has partnered with physicians in six countries to develop data-driven medical technologies for underserved communities, including devices to detect corneal disease.

Mantena also pursued research in Professor Pardis Sabeti’s lab at the Broad Institute, where he built new algorithms to design diagnostic assays that improve the detection of infectious pathogens in resource-limited settings. He has co-authored over 20 scientific publications, and his lead-author work has been published in many journals, including Nature Biotechnology, The Lancet Digital Health, and the Journal of Pediatrics.

Arjun Ramani

Arjun Ramani, from West Lafayette, Indiana, is the son of immigrants from Tamil Nadu, India. He is currently pursuing a PhD in economics at MIT, where he studies technological change and innovation. He hopes his research can inform policies and business practices that generate broadly shared economic growth.

Ramani’s dual interests in technology and the world led him to Stanford University, where he studied economics as an undergraduate and pursued a master’s in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence. As data editor of the university’s newspaper, he started the Stanford Open Data Project to improve campus data transparency. During college, Ramani also spent time at the White House working on economic policy, in Ghana helping startups scale, and at Citadel in financial markets — all of which cultivated a broad interest in the economic world.

After graduating from Stanford, Ramani became The Economist’s global business and economics correspondent. He first covered technology and finance and later shifted to covering artificial intelligence after the technology took the world by storm in 2022.

In 2023, Ramani moved to India to cover the Indian economy in the lead-up to its election. There, he gained a much deeper appreciation for the social and institutional barriers that slowed technology adoption and catch-up growth. Ramani wrote or co-wrote six cover stories, was shortlisted for U.K. financial journalist of the year in 2024 for his AI and economics reporting, and co-authored a six-part special report on India’s economy.

Jupneet Singh ’23

Jupneet Singh, the daughter of Indian immigrants, is a Sikh-American who grew up deeply connected to her Punjabi and Sikh heritage in Somis, California. The Soros Fellowship will support her MD studies at Harvard Medical School’s HST program under the U.S. Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program.

Singh plans to complete her medical residency as an active-duty U.S. Air Force captain, and after serving as a surgeon in the USAF she hopes to enter the United States Public Health Commissioned Corps. While Singh is the first in her family to serve in the U.S. armed services, she is proud to be carrying on a long Sikh military legacy.

Singh graduated from MIT in 2023 with a degree in chemistry and a concentration in history and won a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue two degrees at the University of Oxford: a master’s in public policy and a master’s in translational health sciences. At MIT, she served as the commander (highest-ranked cadet) of the Air Force ROTC Detachment and is now commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. She is the first woman Air Force ROTC Rhodes Scholar.

Singh has worked in de-addiction centers in Punjab, India. She also worked at the Ventura County Family Justice Center and Ventura County Medical Center Trauma Center, and published a first-author paper in The American Surgeon. She founded Pathways to Promise, a program to support the health of children affected by domestic violence. She has conducted research on fatty liver disease under Professor Alex Shalek at MIT and on maternal health inequalities at the National Perinatal Epidemiological Unit at Oxford.

Surprise discovery could lead to improved catalysts for industrial reactions

by David L. Chandler | MIT News |

The process of catalysis — in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction — is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often lack a clear understanding of exactly how they work.

A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that an important industrial synthesis process, the production of vinyl acetate, requires a catalyst to take two different forms, which cycle back and forth from one to the other as the chemical process unfolds.

Previously, it had been thought that only one of the two forms was needed. The new findings are published today in the journal Science, in a paper by MIT graduate students Deiaa Harraz and Kunal Lodaya, Bryan Tang PhD ’23, and MIT professor of chemistry and chemical engineering Yogesh Surendranath.

There are two broad classes of catalysts: homogeneous catalysts, which consist of dissolved molecules, and heterogeneous catalysts, which are solid materials whose surface provides the site for the chemical reaction. “For the longest time,” Surendranath says, “there’s been a general view that you either have catalysis happening on these surfaces, or you have them happening on these soluble molecules.” But the new research shows that in the case of vinyl acetate — an important material that goes into many polymer products such as the rubber in the soles of your shoes — there is an interplay between both classes of catalysis.

“What we discovered,” Surendranath explains, “is that you actually have these solid metal materials converting into molecules, and then converting back into materials, in a cyclic dance.”

He adds: “This work calls into question this paradigm where there’s either one flavor of catalysis or another. Really, there could be an interplay between both of them in certain cases, and that could be really advantageous for having a process that’s selective and efficient.”

The synthesis of vinyl acetate has been a large-scale industrial reaction since the 1960s, and it has been well-researched and refined over the years to improve efficiency. This has happened largely through a trial-and-error approach, without a precise understanding of the underlying mechanisms, the researchers say.

While chemists are often more familiar with homogeneous catalysis mechanisms, and chemical engineers are often more familiar with surface catalysis mechanisms, fewer researchers study both. This is perhaps part of the reason that the full complexity of this reaction was not previously captured. But Harraz says he and his colleagues are working at the interface between disciplines. “We’ve been able to appreciate both sides of this reaction and find that both types of catalysis are critical,” he says.

The reaction that produces vinyl acetate requires something to activate the oxygen molecules that are one of the constituents of the reaction, and something else to activate the other ingredients, acetic acid and ethylene. The researchers found that the form of the catalyst that worked best for one part of the process was not the best for the other. It turns out that the molecular form of the catalyst does the key chemistry with the ethylene and the acetic acid, while it’s the surface that ends up doing the activation of the oxygen.

They found that the underlying process involved in interconverting the two forms of the catalyst is actually corrosion, similar to the process of rusting. “It turns out that in rusting, you actually go through a soluble molecular species somewhere in the sequence,” Surendranath says.

The team borrowed techniques traditionally used in corrosion research to study the process. They used electrochemical tools to study the reaction, even though the overall reaction does not require a supply of electricity. By making potential measurements, the researchers determined that the corrosion of the palladium catalyst material to soluble palladium ions is driven by an electrochemical reaction with the oxygen, converting it to water. Corrosion is “one of the oldest topics in electrochemistry,” says Lodaya, “but applying the science of corrosion to understand catalysis is much newer, and was essential to our findings.”

By correlating measurements of catalyst corrosion with other measurements of the chemical reaction taking place, the researchers proposed that it was the corrosion rate that was limiting the overall reaction. “That’s the choke point that’s controlling the rate of the overall process,” Surendranath says.

The interplay between the two types of catalysis works efficiently and selectively “because it actually uses the synergy of a material surface doing what it’s good at and a molecule doing what it’s good at,” Surendranath says. The finding suggests that, when designing new catalysts, rather than focusing on either solid materials or soluble molecules alone, researchers should think about how the interplay of both may open up new approaches.

“Now, with an improved understanding of what makes this catalyst so effective, you can try to design specific materials or specific interfaces that promote the desired chemistry,” Harraz says. Since this process has been worked on for so long, these findings may not necessarily lead to improvements in this specific process of making vinyl acetate, but it does provide a better understanding of why the materials work as they do, and could lead to improvements in other catalytic processes.

Understanding that “catalysts can transit between molecule and material and back, and the role that electrochemistry plays in those transformations, is a concept that we are really excited to expand on,” Lodaya says.

Harraz adds: “With this new understanding that both types of catalysis could play a role, what other catalytic processes are out there that actually involve both? Maybe those have a lot of room for improvement that could benefit from this understanding.”

This work is “illuminating, something that will be worth teaching at the undergraduate level,” says Christophe Coperet, a professor of inorganic chemistry at ETH Zurich, who was not associated with the research. “The work highlights new ways of thinking. … [It] is notable in the sense that it not only reconciles homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, but it describes these complex processes as half reactions, where electron transfers can cycle between distinct entities.”

The research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation as a Phase I Center for Chemical Innovation; the Center for Interfacial Ionics; and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

MIT affiliates named 2024 AAAS Fellows

by School of Science |

Six current MIT affiliates and 27 additional MIT alumni have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The 2024 class of AAAS Fellows includes 471 scientists, engineers, and innovators, spanning all 24 of AAAS disciplinary sections, who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.

Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87, life member of the MIT Corporation, was named a AAAS Fellow “for outstanding leadership in biotechnology, in particular mRNA therapeutics, and for advocacy for recognition of the contributions of immigrants to economic and scientific progress.” Afeyan is the founder and CEO of the venture creation company Flagship Pioneering, which has built over 100 science-based companies to transform human health and sustainability. He is also the chairman and cofounder of Moderna, which was awarded a 2024 National Medal of Technology and Innovation for the development of its Covid-19 vaccine. Afeyan earned his PhD in biochemical engineering at MIT in 1987 and was a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management for 16 years, starting in 2000. Among other activities at the Institute, he serves on the advisory board of the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning and delivered MIT’s 2024 Commencement address.

Cynthia Breazeal SM ’93, ScD ’00 is a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, where she founded and directs the Personal Robots group in the MIT Media Lab. At MIT Open Learning, she is the MIT dean for digital learning, and in this role, she leverages her experience in emerging digital technologies and business, research, and strategic initiatives to lead Open Learning’s business and research and engagement units. She is also the director of the MIT-wide Initiative on Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (raise.mit.edu). She co-founded the consumer social robotics company, Jibo, Inc., where she served as chief scientist and chief experience officer. She is recognized for distinguished contributions in the field of artificial intelligence education, particularly around the use of social robots, and learning at scale.

Alan Edelman PhD ’89 is an applied mathematics professor for the Department of Mathematics and leads the Applied Computing Group of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the MIT Julia Lab. He is recognized as a 2024 AAAS fellow for distinguished contributions and outstanding breakthroughs in high-performance computing, linear algebra, random matrix theory, computational science, and in particular for the development of the Julia programming language. Edelman has been elected a fellow of five different societies — AMS, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and AAAS.

Robert B. Millard ’73, life member and chairman emeritus of the MIT Corporation, was named a 2024 AAAS Fellow for outstanding contributions to the scientific community and U.S. higher education “through exemplary leadership service to such storied institutions as AAAS and MIT.” Millard joined the MIT Corporation as a term member in 2003 and was elected a life member in 2013. He served on the Executive Committee for 10 years and on the Investment Company Management Board for seven years, including serving as its chair for the last four years. He served as a member of the Visiting Committees for Physics, Architecture, and Chemistry. In addition, Millard has served as a member of the Linguistics and Philosophy Visiting Committee, the Corporation Development Committee, and the Advisory Council for the Council for the Arts. In 2011, Millard received the Bronze Beaver Award, the MIT Alumni Association’s highest honor for distinguished service.

Jagadeesh S. Moodera is a senior research scientist in the Department of Physics. His research interests include experimental condensed matter physics: spin polarized tunneling and nano spintronics; exchange coupled ferromagnet/superconductor interface, triplet pairing, nonreciprocal current transport and memory toward superconducting spintronics for quantum technology; and topological insulators/superconductors, including Majorana bound state studies in metallic systems. His research in the area of spin polarized tunneling led to a breakthrough in observing tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) at room temperature in magnetic tunnel junctions. This resulted in a huge surge in this area of research, currently one of the most active areas. TMR effect is used in all ultra-high-density magnetic data storage, as well as for the development of nonvolatile magnetic random access memory (MRAM) that is currently being advanced further in various electronic devices, including for neuromorphic computing architecture. For his leadership in spintronics, the discovery of TMR, the development of MRAM, and for mentoring the next generation of scientists, Moodera was named a 2024 AAAS Fellow. For his TMR discovery he was awarded the Oliver Buckley Prize (2009) by the American Physical Society (APS), named an American National Science Foundation Competitiveness and Innovation Fellow (2008-10), won IBM and TDK Research Awards (1995-98), and became a Fellow of APS (2000).

Noelle Eckley Selin, the director of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy and a professor in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, uses atmospheric chemistry modeling to inform decision-making strategies on air pollution, climate change, and toxic substances, including mercury and persistent organic pollutants. She has also published articles and book chapters on the interactions between science and policy in international environmental negotiations, in particular focusing on global efforts to regulate hazardous chemicals and persistent organic pollutants. She is named a 2024 AAAS Fellow for world-recognized leadership in modeling the impacts of air pollution on human health, in assessing the costs and benefits of related policies, and in integrating technology dynamics into sustainability science.

Additional MIT alumni honored as 2024 AAAS Fellows include: Danah Boyd SM ’02 (Media Arts and Sciences); Michael S. Branicky ScD ’95 (EECS); Jane P. Chang SM ’95, PhD ’98 (Chemical Engineering); Yong Chen SM ’99 (Mathematics); Roger Nelson Clark PhD ’80 (EAPS); Mark Stephen Daskin ’74, PhD ’78 (Civil and Environmental Engineering); Marla L. Dowell PhD ’94 (Physics); Raissa M. D’Souza PhD ’99 (Physics); Cynthia Joan Ebinger SM ’86, PhD ’88 (EAPS/WHOI); Thomas Henry Epps III ’98, SM ’99 (Chemical Engineering); Daniel Goldman ’94 (Physics); Kenneth Keiler PhD ’96 (Biology); Karen Jean Meech PhD ’87 (EAPS); Christopher B. Murray PhD ’95 (Chemistry); Jason Nieh ’89 (EECS); William Nordhaus PhD ’67 (Economics); Milica Radisic PhD ’04 (Chemical Engineering); James G. Rheinwald PhD ’76 (Biology); Adina L. Roskies PhD ’04 (Philosophy); Linda Rothschild (Preiss) PhD ’70 (Mathematics); Soni Lacefield Shimoda PhD ’03 (Biology); Dawn Y. Sumner PhD ’95 (EAPS); Tina L. Tootle PhD ’04 (Biology); Karen Viskupic PhD ’03 (EAPS); Brant M. Weinstein PhD ’92 (Biology); Chee Wei Wong SM ’01, ScD ’03 (Mechanical Engineering; and Fei Xu PhD ’95 (Brain and Cognitive Sciences).

Drawing inspiration from ancient chemical reactions

by Anne Trafton | MIT News |

To help find solutions to the planet’s climate crisis, MIT Associate Professor Daniel Suess is looking to Earth’s ancient past.

Early in the evolution of life, cells gained the ability to perform reactions such as transferring electrons from one atom to another. These reactions, which help cells to build carbon-containing or nitrogen-containing compounds, rely on specialized enzymes with clusters of metal atoms.

By learning more about how those enzymes work, Suess hopes to eventually devise new ways to perform fundamental chemical reactions that could help capture carbon from the atmosphere or enable the development of alternative fuels.

“We have to find some way of rewiring society so that we are not just relying on vast reserves of reduced carbon, fossil fuels, and burning them using oxygen,” he says. “What we’re doing is we’re looking backward, up to a billion years before oxygen and photosynthesis came along, to see if we can identify the chemical principles that underlie processes that aren’t reliant on burning carbon.”

His work could also shed light on other important cellular reactions such as the conversion of nitrogen gas to ammonia, which is also the key step in the production of synthetic fertilizer.

Exploring chemistry

Suess, who grew up in Spokane, Washington, became interested in math at a young age, but ended up majoring in chemistry and English at Williams College, which he chose based on its appealing selection of courses.

“I was interested in schools that were more focused on the liberal arts model, Williams being one of those. And I just thought they had the right combination of really interesting courses and freedom to take classes that you wanted,” he says. “I went in not expecting to major in chemistry, but then I really enjoyed my chemistry classes and chemistry teachers.”

In his classes, he explored all aspects of chemistry and found them all appealing.

“I liked organic chemistry, because there’s an emphasis on making things. And I liked physical chemistry because there was an attempt to have at least a semiquantitative way of understanding the world. Physical chemistry describes some of the most important developments in science in the 20th century, including quantum mechanics and its application to atoms and molecules,” he says.

After college, Suess came to MIT for graduate school and began working with chemistry professor Jonas Peters, who had recently arrived from Caltech. A couple of years later, Peters ended up moving back to Caltech, and Suess followed, continuing his PhD thesis research on new ways to synthesize inorganic molecules.

His project focused on molecules that consist of a metal such as iron or cobalt bound to a nonmetallic group known as a ligand. Within these molecules, the metal atom typically pulls in electrons from the ligand. However, the molecules Suess worked on were designed so that the metal would give up its own electrons to the ligand. Such molecules can be used to speed up difficult reactions that require breaking very strong bonds, like the nitrogen-nitrogen triple bond in N2.

During a postdoc at the University of California at Davis, Suess switched gears and began working on biomolecules — specifically, metalloproteins. These are protein enzymes that have metals tucked into their active sites, where they help to catalyze reactions.

Suess studied how cells synthesize the metal-containing active sites in these proteins, focusing on an enzyme called iron-iron hydrogenase. This enzyme, found mainly in anaerobic bacteria, including some that live in the human digestive tract, catalyzes reactions involving the transfer of protons and electrons. Specifically, it can combine two protons and two electrons to make H2, or can perform the reverse reaction, breaking H2 into protons and electrons.

“That enzyme is really important because a lot of cellular metabolic processes either generate excess electrons or require excess electrons. If you generate excess electrons, they have to go somewhere, and one solution is to put them on protons to make H2,” Suess says.

Global scale reactions

Since joining the MIT faculty in 2017, Suess has continued his investigations of metalloproteins and the reactions that they catalyze.

“We’re interested in global-scale chemical reactions, meaning they’re occurring on the microscopic scale but happening on a huge scale,” he says. “They impact the planet and have determined what the molecular composition of the biosphere is and what it’s going to be.”

Photosynthesis, which emerged around 2.4 billion years ago, has had the biggest impact on the atmosphere, filling it with oxygen, but Suess focuses on reactions that cells began using even earlier, when the atmosphere lacked oxygen and cell metabolism could not be driven by respiration.

Many of these ancient reactions, which are still used by cells today, involve a class of metalloproteins called iron-sulfur proteins. These enzymes, which are found in all kingdoms of life, are involved in catalyzing many of the most difficult reactions that occur in cells, such as forming carbon radicals and converting nitrogen to ammonia.

To study the metalloenzymes that catalyze these reactions, Suess’s lab takes two different approaches. In one, they create synthetic versions of the proteins that may contain fewer metal atoms, which allows for greater control over the composition and shape of the protein, making them easier to study.

In another approach, they use the natural version of the protein but substitute one of the metal atoms with an isotope that makes it easier to use spectroscopic techniques to analyze the protein’s structure.

“That allows us to study both the bonding in the resting state of an enzyme, as well as the bonding and structures of reaction intermediates that you can only characterize spectroscopically,” Suess says.

Understanding how enzymes perform these reactions could help researchers find new ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by combining it with other molecules to create larger compounds. Finding alternative ways to convert nitrogen gas to ammonia could also have a big impact on greenhouse gas emissions, as the Haber Bosch process now used to synthesize fertilizer produces requires huge amounts of energy.

“Our primary focus is on understanding the natural world, but I think that as we’re looking at different ways to wire biological catalysts to do efficient reactions that impact society, we need to know how that wiring works. And so that is what we’re trying to figure out,” he says.

QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 11 subjects for 2025

by MIT News |

QS World University Rankings has placed MIT in the No. 1 spot in 11 subject areas for 2025, the organization announced today.

The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Computer Science and Information Systems; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Linguistics; Materials Science; Mechanical, Aeronautical, and Manufacturing Engineering; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research.

MIT also placed second in seven subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Architecture/Built Environment; Biological Sciences; Business and Management Studies; Chemistry; Earth and Marine Sciences; and Economics and Econometrics.

For 2024, universities were evaluated in 55 specific subjects and five broader subject areas. MIT was ranked No. 1 in the broader subject area of Engineering and Technology and No. 2 in Natural Sciences.

Quacquarelli Symonds Limited subject rankings, published annually, are designed to help prospective students find the leading schools in their field of interest. Rankings are based on research quality and accomplishments, academic reputation, and graduate employment.

MIT has been ranked as the No. 1 university in the world by QS World University Rankings for 13 straight years.

Breakfast of champions: MIT hosts top young scientists

by Jessica Chomik-Morales | School of Science |

On Feb. 14, some of the nation’s most talented high school researchers convened in Boston for the annual American Junior Academy of Science (AJAS) conference, held alongside the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting. As a highlight of the event, MIT once again hosted its renowned “Breakfast with Scientists,” offering students a unique opportunity to connect with leading scientific minds from around the world.

The AJAS conference began with an opening reception at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, where professor of biology and chemistry Catherine Drennan delivered the keynote address, welcoming 162 high school students from 21 states. Delegates were selected through state Academy of Science competitions, earning the chance to share their work and connect with peers and professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Over breakfast, students engaged with distinguished scientists, including MIT faculty, Nobel laureates, and industry leaders, discussing research, career paths, and the broader impact of scientific discovery.

Amy Keating, MIT biology department head, sat at a table with students ranging from high school juniors to college sophomores. The group engaged in an open discussion about life as a scientist at a leading institution like MIT. One student expressed concern about the competitive nature of innovative research environments, prompting Keating to reassure them, saying, “MIT has a collaborative philosophy rather than a competitive one.”

At another table, Nobel laureate and former MIT postdoc Gary Ruvkun shared a lighthearted moment with students, laughing at a TikTok video they had created to explain their science fair project. The interaction reflected the innate curiosity and excitement that drives discovery at all stages of a scientific career.

Donna Gerardi, executive director of the National Association of Academies of Science, highlighted the significance of the AJAS program. “These students are not just competing in science fairs; they are becoming part of a larger scientific community. The connections they make here can shape their careers and future contributions to science.”

Alongside the breakfast, AJAS delegates participated in a variety of enriching experiences, including laboratory tours, conference sessions, and hands-on research activities.

“I am so excited to be able to discuss my research with experts and get some guidance on the next steps in my academic trajectory,” said Andrew Wesel, a delegate from California.

A defining feature of the AJAS experience was its emphasis on mentorship and collaboration rather than competition. Delegates were officially inducted as lifetime Fellows of the American Junior Academy of Science at the conclusion of the conference, joining a distinguished network of scientists and researchers.

Sponsored by the MIT School of Science and School of Engineering, the breakfast underscored MIT’s longstanding commitment to fostering young scientific talent. Faculty and researchers took the opportunity to encourage students to pursue careers in STEM fields, providing insights into the pathways available to them.

“It was a joy to spend time with such passionate students,” says Kristala Prather, head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “One of the brightest moments for me was sitting next to a young woman who will be joining MIT in the fall — I just have to convince her to study ChemE!”

J-WAFS: Supporting food and water research across MIT

by Longzhen Han | Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab |

MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has transformed the landscape of water and food research at MIT, driving faculty engagement and catalyzing new research and innovation in these critical areas. With philanthropic, corporate, and government support, J-WAFS’ strategic approach spans the entire research life cycle, from support for early-stage research to commercialization grants for more advanced projects.

Over the past decade, J-WAFS has invested approximately $25 million in direct research funding to support MIT faculty pursuing transformative research with the potential for significant impact. “Since awarding our first cohort of seed grants in 2015, it’s remarkable to look back and see that over 10 percent of the MIT faculty have benefited from J-WAFS funding,” observes J-WAFS Executive Director Renee J. Robins ’83. “Many of these professors hadn’t worked on water or food challenges before their first J-WAFS grant.”

By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and supporting high-risk, high-reward projects, J-WAFS has amplified the capacity of MIT faculty to pursue groundbreaking research that addresses some of the world’s most pressing challenges facing our water and food systems.

Drawing MIT faculty to water and food research

J-WAFS open calls for proposals enable faculty to explore bold ideas and develop impactful approaches to tackling critical water and food system challenges. Professor Patrick Doyle’s work in water purification exemplifies this impact. “Without J-WAFS, I would have never ventured into the field of water purification,” Doyle reflects. While previously focused on pharmaceutical manufacturing and drug delivery, exposure to J-WAFS-funded peers led him to apply his expertise in soft materials to water purification. “Both the funding and the J-WAFS community led me to be deeply engaged in understanding some of the key challenges in water purification and water security,” he explains.

Similarly, Professor Otto Cordero of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) leveraged J-WAFS funding to pivot his research into aquaculture. Cordero explains that his first J-WAFS seed grant “has been extremely influential for my lab because it allowed me to take a step in a new direction, with no preliminary data in hand.” Cordero’s expertise is in microbial communities. He was previous unfamiliar with aquaculture, but he saw the relevance of microbial communities the health of farmed aquatic organisms.

Supporting early-career faculty

New assistant professors at MIT have particularly benefited from J-WAFS funding and support. J-WAFS has played a transformative role in shaping the careers and research trajectories of many new faculty members by encouraging them to explore novel research areas, and in many instances providing their first MIT research grant.

Professor Ariel Furst reflects on how pivotal J-WAFS’ investment has been in advancing her research. “This was one of the first grants I received after starting at MIT, and it has truly shaped the development of my group’s research program,” Furst explains. With J-WAFS’ backing, her lab has achieved breakthroughs in chemical detection and remediation technologies for water. “The support of J-WAFS has enabled us to develop the platform funded through this work beyond the initial applications to the general detection of environmental contaminants and degradation of those contaminants,” she elaborates.

Karthish Manthiram, now a professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at Caltech, explains how J-WAFS’ early investment enabled him and other young faculty to pursue ambitious ideas. “J-WAFS took a big risk on us,” Manthiram reflects. His research on breaking the nitrogen triple bond to make ammonia for fertilizer was initially met with skepticism. However, J-WAFS’ seed funding allowed his lab to lay the groundwork for breakthroughs that later attracted significant National Science Foundation (NSF) support. “That early funding from J-WAFS has been pivotal to our long-term success,” he notes.

These stories underscore the broad impact of J-WAFS’ support for early-career faculty, and its commitment to empowering them to address critical global challenges and innovate boldly.

Fueling follow-on funding 

J-WAFS seed grants enable faculty to explore nascent research areas, but external funding for continued work is usually necessary to achieve the full potential of these novel ideas. “It’s often hard to get funding for early stage or out-of-the-box ideas,” notes J-WAFS Director Professor John H. Lienhard V. “My hope, when I founded J-WAFS in 2014, was that seed grants would allow PIs [principal investigators] to prove out novel ideas so that they would be attractive for follow-on funding. And after 10 years, J-WAFS-funded research projects have brought more than $21 million in subsequent awards to MIT.”

Professor Retsef Levi led a seed study on how agricultural supply chains affect food safety, with a team of faculty spanning the MIT schools Engineering and Science as well as the MIT Sloan School of Management. The team parlayed their seed grant research into a multi-million-dollar follow-on initiative. Levi reflects, “The J-WAFS seed funding allowed us to establish the initial credibility of our team, which was key to our success in obtaining large funding from several other agencies.”

Dave Des Marais was an assistant professor in the Department of CEE when he received his first J-WAFS seed grant. The funding supported his research on how plant growth and physiology are controlled by genes and interact with the environment. The seed grant helped launch his lab’s work addressing enhancing climate change resilience in agricultural systems. The work led to his Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the NSF, a prestigious honor for junior faculty members. Now an associate professor, Des Marais’ ongoing project to further investigate the mechanisms and consequences of genomic and environmental interactions is supported by the five-year, $1,490,000 NSF grant. “J-WAFS providing essential funding to get my new research underway,” comments Des Marais.

Stimulating interdisciplinary collaboration

Des Marais’ seed grant was also key to developing new collaborations. He explains, “the J-WAFS grant supported me to develop a collaboration with Professor Caroline Uhler in EECS/IDSS [the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science/Institute for Data, Systems, and Society] that really shaped how I think about framing and testing hypotheses. One of the best things about J-WAFS is facilitating unexpected connections among MIT faculty with diverse yet complementary skill sets.”

Professors A. John Hart of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Benedetto Marelli of CEE also launched a new interdisciplinary collaboration with J-WAFS funding. They partnered to join expertise in biomaterials, microfabrication, and manufacturing, to create printed silk-based colorimetric sensors that detect food spoilage. “The J-WAFS Seed Grant provided a unique opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration,” Hart notes.

Professors Stephen Graves in the MIT Sloan School of Management and Bishwapriya Sanyal in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) partnered to pursue new research on agricultural supply chains. With field work in Senegal, their J-WAFS-supported project brought together international development specialists and operations management experts to study how small firms and government agencies influence access to and uptake of irrigation technology by poorer farmers. “We used J-WAFS to spur a collaboration that would have been improbable without this grant,” they explain. Being part of the J-WAFS community also introduced them to researchers in Professor Amos Winter’s lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering working on irrigation technologies for low-resource settings. DUSP doctoral candidate Mark Brennan notes, “We got to share our understanding of how irrigation markets and irrigation supply chains work in developing economies, and then we got to contrast that with their understanding of how irrigation system models work.”

Timothy Swager, professor of chemistry, and Rohit Karnik, professor of mechanical engineering and J-WAFS associate director, collaborated on a sponsored research project supported by Xylem, Inc. through the J-WAFS Research Affiliate program. The cross-disciplinary research, which targeted the development of ultra-sensitive sensors for toxic PFAS chemicals, was conceived following a series of workshops hosted by J-WAFS. Swager and Karnik were two of the participants, and their involvement led to the collaborative proposal that Xylem funded. “J-WAFS funding allowed us to combine Swager lab’s expertise in sensing with my lab’s expertise in microfluidics to develop a cartridge for field-portable detection of PFAS,” says Karnik. “J-WAFS has enriched my research program in so many ways,” adds Swager, who is now working to commercialize the technology.

Driving global collaboration and impact

J-WAFS has also helped MIT faculty establish and advance international collaboration and impactful global research. By funding and supporting projects that connect MIT researchers with international partners, J-WAFS has not only advanced technological solutions, but also strengthened cross-cultural understanding and engagement.

Professor Matthew Shoulders leads the inaugural J-WAFS Grand Challenge project. In response to the first J-WAFS call for “Grand Challenge” proposals, Shoulders assembled an interdisciplinary team based at MIT to enhance and provide climate resilience to agriculture by improving the most inefficient aspect of photosynthesis, the notoriously-inefficient carbon dioxide-fixing plant enzyme RuBisCO. J-WAFS funded this high-risk/high-reward project following a competitive process that engaged external reviewers through a several rounds of iterative proposal development. The technical feedback to the team led them to researchers with complementary expertise from the Australian National University. “Our collaborative team of biochemists and synthetic biologists, computational biologists, and chemists is deeply integrated with plant biologists and field trial experts, yielding a robust feedback loop for enzyme engineering,” Shoulders says. “Together, this team will be able to make a concerted effort using the most modern, state-of-the-art techniques to engineer crop RuBisCO with an eye to helping make meaningful gains in securing a stable crop supply, hopefully with accompanying improvements in both food and water security.”

Professor Leon Glicksman and Research Engineer Eric Verploegen’s team designed a low-cost cooling chamber to preserve fruits and vegetables harvested by smallholder farmers with no access to cold chain storage. J-WAFS’ guidance motivated the team to prioritize practical considerations informed by local collaborators, ensuring market competitiveness. “As our new idea for a forced-air evaporative cooling chamber was taking shape, we continually checked that our solution was evolving in a direction that would be competitive in terms of cost, performance, and usability to existing commercial alternatives,” explains Verploegen. Following the team’s initial seed grant, the team secured a J-WAFS Solutions commercialization grant, which Verploegen say “further motivated us to establish partnerships with local organizations capable of commercializing the technology earlier in the project than we might have done otherwise.” The team has since shared an open-source design as part of its commercialization strategy to maximize accessibility and impact.

Bringing corporate sponsored research opportunities to MIT faculty

J-WAFS also plays a role in driving private partnerships, enabling collaborations that bridge industry and academia. Through its Research Affiliate Program, for example, J-WAFS provides opportunities for faculty to collaborate with industry on sponsored research, helping to convert scientific discoveries into licensable intellectual property (IP) that companies can turn into commercial products and services.

J-WAFS introduced professor of mechanical engineering Alex Slocum to a challenge presented by its research affiliate company, Xylem: how to design a more energy-efficient pump for fluctuating flows. With centrifugal pumps consuming an estimated 6 percent of U.S. electricity annually, Slocum and his then-graduate student Hilary Johnson SM ’18, PhD ’22 developed an innovative variable volute mechanism that reduces energy usage. “Xylem envisions this as the first in a new category of adaptive pump geometry,” comments Johnson. The research produced a pump prototype and related IP that Xylem is working on commercializing. Johnson notes that these outcomes “would not have been possible without J-WAFS support and facilitation of the Xylem industry partnership.” Slocum adds, “J-WAFS enabled Hilary to begin her work on pumps, and Xylem sponsored the research to bring her to this point … where she has an opportunity to do far more than the original project called for.”

Swager speaks highly of the impact of corporate research sponsorship through J-WAFS on his research and technology translation efforts. His PFAS project with Karnik described above was also supported by Xylem. “Xylem was an excellent sponsor of our research. Their engagement and feedback were instrumental in advancing our PFAS detection technology, now on the path to commercialization,” Swager says.

Looking forward

What J-WAFS has accomplished is more than a collection of research projects; a decade of impact demonstrates how J-WAFS’ approach has been transformative for many MIT faculty members. As Professor Mathias Kolle puts it, his engagement with J-WAFS “had a significant influence on how we think about our research and its broader impacts.” He adds that it “opened my eyes to the challenges in the field of water and food systems and the many different creative ideas that are explored by MIT.”

This thriving ecosystem of innovation, collaboration, and academic growth around water and food research has not only helped faculty build interdisciplinary and international partnerships, but has also led to the commercialization of transformative technologies with real-world applications. C. Cem Taşan, the POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy who is leading a J-WAFS Solutions commercialization team that is about to launch a startup company, sums it up by noting, “Without J-WAFS, we wouldn’t be here at all.”

As J-WAFS looks to the future, its continued commitment — supported by the generosity of its donors and partners — builds on a decade of success enabling MIT faculty to advance water and food research that addresses some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Mapping mRNA through its life cycle within a cell

by Anne Trafton | MIT News |

When Xiao Wang applied to faculty jobs, many of the institutions where she interviewed thought her research proposal — to study the life cycle of RNA in cells and how it influences normal development and disease — was too broad.

However, that was not the case when she interviewed at MIT, where her future colleagues embraced her ideas and encouraged her to be even more bold.

“What I’m doing now is even broader, even bolder than what I initially proposed,” says Wang, who holds joint appointments in the Department of Chemistry and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “I got great support from all my colleagues in my department and at Broad so that I could get the resources to conduct what I wanted to do. It’s also a demonstration of how brave the students are. There is a really innovative culture and environment here, so the students are not scared by taking on something that might sound weird or unrealistic.”

Wang’s work on RNA brings together students from chemistry, biology, computer science, neuroscience, and other fields. In her lab, research is focused on developing tools that pinpoint where in a given cell different types of messenger RNA are translated into proteins — information that can offer insight into how cells control their fate and what goes wrong in disease, especially in the brain.

“The joint position between MIT Chemistry and the Broad Institute was very attractive to me because I was trained as a chemist, and I would like to teach and recruit students from chemistry. But meanwhile, I also wanted to get exposure to biomedical topics and have collaborators outside chemistry. I can collaborate with biologists, doctors, as well as computational scientists who analyze all these daunting data,” she says.

Imaging RNA

Wang began her career at MIT in 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic began. Until that point, she hardly knew anyone in the Boston area, but she found a warm welcome.

“I wasn’t trained at MIT, and I had never lived in Boston before. At first, I had very small social circles, just with my colleagues and my students, but amazingly, even during the pandemic, I never felt socially isolated. I just felt so plugged in already even though it’s very a close, small circle,” she says.

Growing up in China, Wang became interested in science in middle school, when she was chosen to participate in China’s National Olympiad in math and chemistry. That gave her the chance to learn college-level course material, and she ended up winning a gold medal in the nationwide chemistry competition.

“That exposure was enough to draw me into initially mathematics, but later on more into chemistry. That’s how I got interested in a more science-oriented major and then career path,” Wang says.

At Peking University, she majored in chemistry and molecular engineering. There, she worked with Professor Jian Pei, who gave her the opportunity to work independently on her own research project.

“I really like to do research because every day you have a hypothesis, you have a design, and you make it happen. It’s like playing a video game: You have this roughly daily feedback loop. Sometimes it’s a reward, sometimes it’s not. I feel it’s more interesting than taking a class, so I think that made me decide I should apply for graduate school,” she says.

As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, she became interested in RNA while doing a rotation in the lab of Chuan He, a professor of chemistry. He was studying chemical modifications that affect the function of messenger RNA — the molecules that carry protein-building instructions from DNA to ribosomes, where proteins are assembled.

Wang ended up joining He’s lab, where she studied a common mRNA modification known as m6A, which influences how efficiently mRNA is translated into protein and how fast it gets degraded in the cell. She also began to explore how mRNA modifications affect embryonic development. As a model for these studies, she was using zebrafish, which have transparent embryos that develop from fertilized eggs into free-swimming larvae within two days. That got her interested in developing methods that could reveal where different types of RNA were being expressed, by imaging the entire organism.

Such an approach, she soon realized, could also be useful for studying the brain. As a postdoc at Stanford University, she started to develop RNA imaging methods, working with Professor Karl Deisseroth. There are existing techniques for identifying mRNA molecules that are expressed in individual cells, but those don’t offer information about exactly where in the cells different types of mRNA are located. She began developing a technique called STARmap that could accomplish this type of “spatial transcriptomics.”

Using this technique, researchers first use formaldehyde to crosslink all of the mRNA molecules in place. Then, the tissue is washed with fluorescent DNA probes that are complementary to the target mRNA sequences. These probes can then be imaged and sequenced, revealing the locations of each mRNA sequence within a cell. This allows for the visualization of mRNA molecules that encode thousands of different genes within single cells.

“I was leveraging my background in the chemistry of RNA to develop this RNA-centered brain mapping technology, which allows you to use RNA expression profiles to define brain cell types and also visualize their spatial architecture,” Wang says.

Tracking the RNA life cycle

Members of Wang’s lab are now working on expanding the capability of the STARmap technique so that it can be used to analyze brain function and brain wiring. They are also developing tools that will allow them to map the entire life cycle of mRNA molecules, from synthesis to translation to degradation, and track how these molecules are transported within a cell during their lifetime.

One of these tools, known as RIBOmap, pinpoints the locations of mRNA molecules as they are being translated at ribosomes. Another tool allows the researchers to measure how quickly mRNA is degraded after being transcribed.

“We are trying to develop a toolkit that will let us visualize every step of the RNA life cycle inside cells and tissues,” Wang says. “These are newer generations of tool development centered around these RNA biological questions.”

One of these central questions is how different cell types control their RNA life cycles differently, and how that affects their differentiation. Differences in RNA control may also be a factor in diseases such as Alzheimer’s. In a 2023 study, Wang and MIT Professor Morgan Sheng used a version of STARmap to discover how cells called microglia become more inflammatory as amyloid-beta plaques form in the brain. Wang’s lab is also pursuing studies of how differences in mRNA translation might affect schizophrenia and other neurological disorders.

“The reason we think there will be a lot of interesting biology to discover is because the formation of neural circuits is through synapses, and synapse formation and learning and memory are strongly associated with localized RNA translation, which involves multiple steps including RNA transport and recycling,” she says.

In addition to investigating those biological questions, Wang is also working on ways to boost the efficiency of mRNA therapeutics and vaccines by changing their chemical modifications or their topological structure.

“Our goal is to create a toolbox and RNA synthesis strategy where we can precisely tune the chemical modification on every particle of RNA,” Wang says. “We want to establish how those modifications will influence how fast mRNA can produce protein, and in which cell types they could be used to more efficiently produce protein.”