Author: MIT News

Scientists preserve DNA in an amber-like polymer

by Anne Trafton | MIT News |

In the movie “Jurassic Park,” scientists extracted DNA that had been preserved in amber for millions of years, and used it to create a population of long-extinct dinosaurs.

Inspired partly by that film, MIT researchers have developed a glassy, amber-like polymer that can be used for long-term storage of DNA, whether entire human genomes or digital files such as photos.

Most current methods for storing DNA require freezing temperatures, so they consume a great deal of energy and are not feasible in many parts of the world. In contrast, the new amber-like polymer can store DNA at room temperature while protecting the molecules from damage caused by heat or water.

The researchers showed that they could use this polymer to store DNA sequences encoding the theme music from Jurassic Park, as well as an entire human genome. They also demonstrated that the DNA can be easily removed from the polymer without damaging it.

“Freezing DNA is the number one way to preserve it, but it’s very expensive, and it’s not scalable,” says James Banal, a former MIT postdoc. “I think our new preservation method is going to be a technology that may drive the future of storing digital information on DNA.”

Banal and Jeremiah Johnson, the A. Thomas Geurtin Professor of Chemistry at MIT, are the senior authors of the study, published yesterday in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Former MIT postdoc Elizabeth Prince and MIT postdoc Ho Fung Cheng are the lead authors of the paper.

Capturing DNA

DNA, a very stable molecule, is well-suited for storing massive amounts of information, including digital data. Digital storage systems encode text, photos, and other kind of information as a series of 0s and 1s. This same information can be encoded in DNA using the four nucleotides that make up the genetic code: A, T, G, and C. For example, G and C could be used to represent 0 while A and T represent 1.

DNA offers a way to store this digital information at very high density: In theory, a coffee mug full of DNA could store all of the world’s data. DNA is also very stable and relatively easy to synthesize and sequence.

In 2021, Banal and his postdoc advisor, Mark Bathe, an MIT professor of biological engineering, developed a way to store DNA in particles of silica, which could be labeled with tags that revealed the particles’ contents. That work led to a spinout called Cache DNA.

One downside to that storage system is that it takes several days to embed DNA into the silica particles. Furthermore, removing the DNA from the particles requires hydrofluoric acid, which can be hazardous to workers handling the DNA.

To come up with alternative storage materials, Banal began working with Johnson and members of his lab. Their idea was to use a type of polymer known as a degradable thermoset, which consists of polymers that form a solid when heated. The material also includes cleavable links that can be easily broken, allowing the polymer to be degraded in a controlled way.

“With these deconstructable thermosets, depending on what cleavable bonds we put into them, we can choose how we want to degrade them,” Johnson says.

For this project, the researchers decided to make their thermoset polymer from styrene and a cross-linker, which together form an amber-like thermoset called cross-linked polystyrene. This thermoset is also very hydrophobic, so it can prevent moisture from getting in and damaging the DNA. To make the thermoset degradable, the styrene monomers and cross-linkers are copolymerized with monomers called thionolactones. These links can be broken by treating them with a molecule called cysteamine.

Because styrene is so hydrophobic, the researchers had to come up with a way to entice DNA — a hydrophilic, negatively charged molecule — into the styrene.

To do that, they identified a combination of three monomers that they could turn into polymers that dissolve DNA by helping it interact with styrene. Each of the monomers has different features that cooperate to get the DNA out of water and into the styrene. There, the DNA forms spherical complexes, with charged DNA in the center and hydrophobic groups forming an outer layer that interacts with styrene. When heated, this solution becomes a solid glass-like block, embedded with DNA complexes.

The researchers dubbed their method T-REX (Thermoset-REinforced Xeropreservation). The process of embedding DNA into the polymer network takes a few hours, but that could become shorter with further optimization, the researchers say.

To release the DNA, the researchers first add cysteamine, which cleaves the bonds holding the polystyrene thermoset together, breaking it into smaller pieces. Then, a detergent called SDS can be added to remove the DNA from polystyrene without damaging it.

Storing information

Using these polymers, the researchers showed that they could encapsulate DNA of varying length, from tens of nucleotides up to an entire human genome (more than 50,000 base pairs). They were able to store DNA encoding the Emancipation Proclamation and the MIT logo, in addition to the theme music from “Jurassic Park.”

After storing the DNA and then removing it, the researchers sequenced it and found that no errors had been introduced, which is a critical feature of any digital data storage system.

The researchers also showed that the thermoset polymer can protect DNA from temperatures up to 75 degrees Celsius (167 degrees Fahrenheit). They are now working on ways to streamline the process of making the polymers and forming them into capsules for long-term storage.

Cache DNA, a company started by Banal and Bathe, with Johnson as a member of the scientific advisory board, is now working on further developing DNA storage technology. The earliest application they envision is storing genomes for personalized medicine, and they also anticipate that these stored genomes could undergo further analysis as better technology is developed in the future.

“The idea is, why don’t we preserve the master record of life forever?” Banal says. “Ten years or 20 years from now, when technology has advanced way more than we could ever imagine today, we could learn more and more things. We’re still in the very infancy of understanding the genome and how it relates to disease.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Advocating for science funding on Capitol Hill

by Hannah Jane LeBlanc | Science Policy Initiative |

This spring, 26 MIT students and postdocs traveled to Washington to meet with congressional staffers to advocate for increased science funding for fiscal year 2025. These conversations were impactful given the recent announcement of budget cuts for several federal science agencies for FY24.

The participants met with 85 congressional offices representing 30 states over two days April 8-9. Overall, the group advocated for $89.46 billion in science funding across 11 federal scientific agencies.

Every spring, the MIT Science Policy Initiative (SPI) organizes the Congressional Visit Days (CVD). The trip exposes participants to the process of U.S. federal policymaking and the many avenues researchers can use to advocate for scientific research. The participants also meet with Washington-based alumni and members of the MIT Washington Office and learn about policy careers.

This year, CVD was jointly co-organized by Marie Floryan and Andrew Fishberg, two PhD students in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics and Astronautics, respectively. Before the trip, the participants attended two training sessions organized by SPI, the MIT Washington Office, and the MIT Policy Lab. The participants learned how funding is appropriated at the federal level, the role of elected congressional officials and their staffers in the legislative process, and how academic researchers can get involved in advocating for policies for science.

Julian Ufert, a doctoral student in chemical engineering, says, “CVD was a remarkable opportunity to share insights from my research with policymakers, learn about U.S. politics, and serve the greater scientific community. I thoroughly enjoyed the contacts I made both on Capitol Hill and with MIT students and postdocs who share an interest in science policy.”

In addition to advocating for increased science funding, the participants advocated for topics pertaining to their research projects. A wide variety of topics were discussed, including AI, cybersecurity, energy production and storage, and biotechnology. Naturally, the recent advent of groundbreaking AI technologies, like ChatGPT, brought the topic of AI to the forefront of many offices interested, with multiple offices serving on the newly formed bipartisan AI Task Force.

These discussions were useful for both parties: The participants learned about the methods and challenges associated with enacting legislation, and the staffers directly heard from academic researchers about what is needed to promote scientific progress and innovation.

“It was fascinating to experience the interest and significant involvement of Congressional offices in policy matters related to science and technology. Most staffers were well aware of the general technological advancements and eager to learn more about how our research will impact society,” says Vipindev Vasudevan, a postdoc in electrical and computer engineering.

Dina Sharon, a PhD student in chemistry, adds, “The offices where we met with Congressional staffers were valuable classrooms! Our conversations provided insights into policymakers’ goals, how science can help reach these goals, and how scientists can help cultivate connections between the research and policy spheres.”

Participants also shared how science funding has directly impacted them, discussing how federal grants have supported their graduate education and for the need for open access research.

QS ranks MIT the world’s No. 1 university for 2024-25

by MIT News |

MIT has again been named the world’s top university by the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today. This is the 13th year in a row MIT has received this distinction.

The full 2025 edition of the rankings — published by Quacquarelli Symonds, an organization specializing in education and study abroad — can be found at TopUniversities.com. The QS rankings are based on factors including academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, student-to-faculty ratio, proportion of international faculty, and proportion of international students.

MIT was also ranked the world’s top university in 11 of the subject areas ranked by QS, as announced in April of this year.

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 five subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Architecture/Built Environment; Biological Sciences; Chemistry; and Economics and Econometrics.

An expansive approach to making new compounds

by Anne Trafton | MIT News |

While most chemistry labs focus on either organic (carbon-containing) or inorganic (metal-containing) molecules, Robert Gilliard’s lab takes a more expansive approach.

On any given day in his lab, researchers may be synthesizing new materials that can light up or change color in response to temperature changes, designing new molecules that activate chemical bonds, or finding new ways to make useful compounds out of carbon dioxide. Mixing different approaches and drawing from a variety of areas of expertise is the defining feature of his lab’s style of chemistry.

“At the core of our program, we are a chemical synthesis lab. We make molecules,” Gilliard says. “I have students that are in the organic division and students that are in the inorganic division, and we combine concepts from both worlds. We really can’t do our chemistry without both.”

Some of the molecules his lab creates require such specialized laboratory skills that very few other labs even try to make them. These compounds have a variety of unique optical and electrical properties that have drawn interest from companies that make LEDs and other optoelectronic devices.

Previously a professor at the University of Virginia, Gilliard joined the MIT faculty in 2023 as the Novartis Associate Professor of Chemistry, in part because of the opportunities to work with engineers to investigate device applications for those molecules, and to connect with companies interested in their lighting-generating properties.

“By bringing in components from different subareas of chemistry, we have generated some interesting optical and electronic properties in these compounds,” he says.

A winding path

After joining the faculty at UVA in 2017, Gilliard had no inkling that he would soon end up at MIT. His path to the Institute began soon after beginning his appointment, when he invited Christopher “Kit” Cummins, the Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry at MIT, to give a seminar at UVA. Cummins was very interested in the compounds Gilliard was working on and suggested that Gilliard come to MIT for six months as part of the MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program.

At the time, Gilliard was still getting settled as a new faculty member and didn’t want to leave his lab, but a few years later, when things were up and running, he joined the MLK program for the 2021-2022 school year. He worked closely with Cummins and others in MIT’s Department of Chemistry, and at the end of the year, department head Troy Van Voorhis broached the idea of bringing him to MIT as a permanent faculty member.

Gilliard, taken by surprise, had no intention of leaving his position at UVA, but he was intrigued by the opportunities for collaboration at MIT and in the Boston area in general.

“The MLK program was a great experience, a well-organized program that really exposed me to the whole MIT institution. I can say this, and I mean it: There’s no way I would’ve come here as a faculty member had I not done that MLK fellowship,” Gilliard says. “I was really enjoying my appointment at the University of Virginia and students that I had, and colleagues there. It would have been nearly impossible to get me to move if I hadn’t already spent that time at MIT and enjoyed the atmosphere and the people.”

Gilliard first became interested in chemistry as a high school student in Hartsville, South Carolina, thanks to an inspiring teacher, Charlotte Godwin, who taught his chemistry, physics, and physical science honors classes. He went to Clemson University planning to study premed, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about that choice.

“Before I arrived, I think I already knew I wasn’t going to do that because I don’t really like hospitals that much,” he recalls. “And so I changed my major before I even arrived, and I changed it to engineering.”

Clemson has a well-known engineering program, but after a couple of classes, Gilliard realized that wasn’t the best choice for him, either. He was, however, enjoying his chemistry classes, so he switched his major to chemistry and signed up to do undergraduate research.

He ended up working with a professor named Rhett Smith, who had just joined the Clemson faculty after doing a postdoc at MIT with Professor Stephen Lippard. In Smith’s lab, Gilliard worked on synthesizing catalysts as well as molecules that could be used as sensors, including sensors for cyanide and TNT, an explosive.

“That was just an amazing experience,” he says. “That’s when I knew that research was something that I enjoyed and that I would likely go on to graduate school.”

When he wasn’t working in Smith’s lab, Gilliard was still immersed in chemistry, working in the organic chemistry teaching labs. “I was doing so much chemistry, but I was having fun with it, so it didn’t really feel like work. It felt like something exciting to explore,” he says.

Novel compounds

As a graduate student at the University of Georgia, Gilliard focused on inorganic main-group chemistry but also took organic chemistry courses and was a teaching assistant for two organic chemistry classes. “I knew that I wanted to learn as much organic chemistry as possible because it would be beneficial for my career,” he says.

For his PhD research, he studied chemical bonds that can form between main-group elements — elements found at the edges of the periodic table, in columns 1-2 and 13-18. These types of bonds can be very difficult to achieve, but once made, they expand the possible bonding scenarios for non-transition metal elements, which makes them useful in a range of chemical reactions.

While doing a postdoctoral fellowship, which he divided between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and Case Western Reserve University, Gilliard worked on combining small phosphorus-containing reagents into phosphorus heterocycles, which consist of multiple varied rings fused together.

At the University of Virginia, and now in his lab at MIT, Gilliard continued to study heterocycles, now focusing mainly on boron heterocycles. These molecules hold potential in numerous optical and electronic applications, in part because of their ability to efficiently donate or accept electrons from other molecules. Recently, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Gilliard’s lab published the first examples of boraphenalenyl radicals and diborepin biradicals that exhibit this important redox behavior. Such materials can also be used to make stimuli-responsive materials and chemical sensors, or to advance various light-emitting or absorbing technologies.

His lab also works on compounds containing bismuth and antimony that can be used to activate carbon-hydrogen bonds. Another area of focus is capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into useful chemicals.

The success of all of these projects, Gilliard says, depends on the “great team” working in his lab, including several students, postdocs, and research scientists who came with him from the University of Virginia.

“A lot of the compounds that we make are very, very difficult. They require specialized techniques and skills, so I’m grateful to have talented folks working in my lab,” he says.

Researchers develop a detector for continuously monitoring toxic gases

by David L. Chandler | MIT News |

Most systems used to detect toxic gases in industrial or domestic settings can be used only once, or at best a few times. Now, researchers at MIT have developed a detector that could provide continuous monitoring for the presence of these gases, at low cost.

The new system combines two existing technologies, bringing them together in a way that preserves the advantages of each while avoiding their limitations. The team used a material called a metal-organic framework, or MOF, which is highly sensitive to tiny traces of gas but whose performance quickly degrades, and combined it with a polymer material that is highly durable and easier to process, but much less sensitive.

The results are reported today in the journal Advanced Materials, in a paper by MIT professors Aristide Gumyusenge, Mircea Dinca, Heather Kulik, and Jesus del Alamo, graduate student Heejung Roh, and postdocs Dong-Ha Kim, Yeongsu Cho, and Young-Moo Jo.

Highly porous and with large surface areas, MOFs come in a variety of compositions. Some can be insulators, but the ones used for this work are highly electrically conductive. With their sponge-like form, they are effective at capturing molecules of various gases, and the sizes of their pores can be tailored to make them selective for particular kinds of gases. “If you are using them as a sensor, you can recognize if the gas is there if it has an effect on the resistivity of the MOF,” says Gumyusenge, the paper’s senior author and the Merton C. Flemings Career Development Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

The drawback for these materials’ use as detectors for gases is that they readily become saturated, and then can no longer detect and quantify new inputs. “That’s not what you want. You want to be able to detect and reuse,” Gumyusenge says. “So, we decided to use a polymer composite to achieve this reversibility.”

The team used a class of conductive polymers that Gumyusenge and his co-workers had previously shown can respond to gases without permanently binding to them. “The polymer, even though it doesn’t have the high surface area that the MOFs do, will at least provide this recognize-and-release type of phenomenon,” he says.

The team combined the polymers in a liquid solution along with the MOF material in powdered form, and deposited the mixture on a substrate, where they dry into a uniform, thin coating. By combining the polymer, with its quick detection capability, and the more sensitive MOFs, in a one-to-one ratio, he says, “suddenly we get a sensor that has both the high sensitivity we get from the MOF and the reversibility that is enabled by the presence of the polymer.”

The material changes its electrical resistance when molecules of the gas are temporarily trapped in the material. These changes in resistance can be continuously monitored by simply attaching an ohmmeter to track the resistance over time. Gumyusenge and his students demonstrated the composite material’s ability to detect nitrogen dioxide, a toxic gas produced by many kinds of combustion, in a small lab-scale device. After 100 cycles of detection, the material was still maintaining its baseline performance within a margin of about 5 to 10 percent, demonstrating its long-term use potential.

In addition, this material has far greater sensitivity than most presently used detectors for nitrogen dioxide, the team reports. This gas is often detected after the use of stove ovens. And, with this gas recently linked to many asthma cases in the U.S., reliable detection in low concentrations is important. The team demonstrated that this new composite could detect, reversibly, the gas at concentrations as low as 2 parts per million.

While their demonstration was specifically aimed at nitrogen dioxide, Gumyusenge says, “we can definitely tailor the chemistry to target other volatile molecules,” as long as they are small polar analytes, “which tend to be most of the toxic gases.”

Besides being compatible with a simple hand-held detector or a smoke-alarm type of device, one advantage of the material is that the polymer allows it to be deposited as an extremely thin uniform film, unlike regular MOFs, which are generally in an inefficient powder form. Because the films are so thin, there is little material needed and production material costs could be low; the processing methods could be typical of those used for industrial coating processes. “So, maybe the limiting factor will be scaling up the synthesis of the polymers, which we’ve been synthesizing in small amounts,” Gumyusenge says.

“The next steps will be to evaluate these in real-life settings,” he says. For example, the material could be applied as a coating on chimneys or exhaust pipes to continuously monitor gases through readings from an attached resistance monitoring device. In such settings, he says, “we need tests to check if we truly differentiate it from other potential contaminants that we might have overlooked in the lab setting. Let’s put the sensors out in real-world scenarios and see how they do.”

The work was supported by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Seven from MIT elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2024

by MIT News |

Seven MIT faculty members are among the 250 leaders from academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced April 24.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications, as well as studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities and culture, and education.

Those elected from MIT in 2024 are:

  • Edward F. Crawley, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, post-tenure;
  • Nathaniel Hendren, professor of economics;
  • Mei Hong, David A. Leighty Professor of Chemistry;
  • Tod Machover, Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Interactive Media Design;
  • Anna Mikusheva, professor of economics;
  • Elchanan Mossel, professor of mathematics; and
  • Xiao-Gang Wen, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics.

“We honor these artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors for their accomplishments and for the curiosity, creativity, and courage required to reach new heights,” says David Oxtoby, president of the academy. “We invite these exceptional individuals to join in the academy’s work to address serious challenges and advance the common good.”

Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading thinkers from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Maria Mitchell and Daniel Webster in the 19th century, and Toni Morrison and Albert Einstein in the 20th century. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.

Researchers detect a new molecule in space

by Danielle Doughty | Department of Chemistry |

New research from the group of MIT Professor Brett McGuire has revealed the presence of a previously unknown molecule in space. The team’s open-access paper, “Rotational Spectrum and First Interstellar Detection of 2-Methoxyethanol Using ALMA Observations of NGC 6334I,” appears in April 12 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Zachary T.P. Fried, a graduate student in the McGuire group and the lead author of the publication, worked to assemble a puzzle comprised of pieces collected from across the globe, extending beyond MIT to France, Florida, Virginia, and Copenhagen, to achieve this exciting discovery.

“Our group tries to understand what molecules are present in regions of space where stars and solar systems will eventually take shape,” explains Fried. “This allows us to piece together how chemistry evolves alongside the process of star and planet formation. We do this by looking at the rotational spectra of molecules, the unique patterns of light they give off as they tumble end-over-end in space. These patterns are fingerprints (barcodes) for molecules. To detect new molecules in space, we first must have an idea of what molecule we want to look for, then we can record its spectrum in the lab here on Earth, and then finally we look for that spectrum in space using telescopes.”

Searching for molecules in space

The McGuire Group has recently begun to utilize machine learning to suggest good target molecules to search for. In 2023, one of these machine learning models suggested the researchers target a molecule known as 2-methoxyethanol.

“There are a number of ‘methoxy’ molecules in space, like dimethyl ether, methoxymethanol, ethyl methyl ether, and methyl formate, but 2-methoxyethanol would be the largest and most complex ever seen,” says Fried. To detect this molecule using radiotelescope observations, the group first needed to measure and analyze its rotational spectrum on Earth. The researchers combined experiments from the University of Lille (Lille, France), the New College of Florida (Sarasota, Florida), and the McGuire lab at MIT to measure this spectrum over a broadband region of frequencies ranging from the microwave to sub-millimeter wave regimes (approximately 8 to 500 gigahertz).

The data gleaned from these measurements permitted a search for the molecule using Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations toward two separate star-forming regions: NGC 6334I and IRAS 16293-2422B. Members of the McGuire group analyzed these telescope observations alongside researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Charlottesville, Virginia) and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Ultimately, we observed 25 rotational lines of 2-methoxyethanol that lined up with the molecular signal observed toward NGC 6334I (the barcode matched!), thus resulting in a secure detection of 2-methoxyethanol in this source,” says Fried. “This allowed us to then derive physical parameters of the molecule toward NGC 6334I, such as its abundance and excitation temperature. It also enabled an investigation of the possible chemical formation pathways from known interstellar precursors.”

Looking forward

Molecular discoveries like this one help the researchers to better understand the development of molecular complexity in space during the star formation process. 2-methoxyethanol, which contains 13 atoms, is quite large for interstellar standards — as of 2021, only six species larger than 13 atoms were detected outside the solar system, many by McGuire’s group, and all of them existing as ringed structures.

“Continued observations of large molecules and subsequent derivations of their abundances allows us to advance our knowledge of how efficiently large molecules can form and by which specific reactions they may be produced,” says Fried. “Additionally, since we detected this molecule in NGC 6334I but not in IRAS 16293-2422B, we were presented with a unique opportunity to look into how the differing physical conditions of these two sources may be affecting the chemistry that can occur.”

Twenty-three MIT faculty honored as “Committed to Caring” for 2023-25

by Office of Graduate Education |

In the halls of MIT, a distinctive thread of compassion weaves through the fabric of education. As students adjust to a postpandemic normal, many professors have played a pivotal role by helping them navigate the realities of hybrid learning and a rapidly changing postgraduation landscape.

The Committed to Caring (C2C) program at MIT is a student-driven initiative that celebrates faculty members who have served as exceptional mentors to graduate students. Twenty-three MIT professors have been selected as recipients of the C2C award for 2023-25, marking the most extensive cohort of honorees to date. These individuals join the ranks of 75 previous C2C honorees.

The actions of these MIT faculty members over the past two years underscore their profound commitment to the well-being, growth, and success of their students. These educators go above and beyond their roles, demonstrating an unwavering dedication to mentorship, inclusion, and a holistic approach to student development. They aim to create a nurturing environment where students not only thrive academically, but also flourish personally.

The following faculty members are the 2023-25 Committed to Caring honorees:

  • Hamsa Balakrishnan, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
  • Cynthia Breazeal, Media Lab
  • Roberto Fernandez, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Nuh Gedik, Department of Physics
  • Mariya Grinberg, Department of Political Science
  • Ming Guo, Department of Mechanical Engineering
  • Myriam Heiman, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
  • Rohit Karnik, Department of Mechanical Engineering
  • Erik Lin-Greenberg, Department of Political Science
  • Michael McDonald, Department of Physics
  • Emery Neal Brown, Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology
  • Wanda Orlikowski, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Kenneth Oye, Department of Political Science
  • Kristala Prather, Department of Chemical Engineering
  • Zachary Seth Hartwig, Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
  • Tracy Slatyer, Department of Physics
  • Iain Stewart, Department of Physics
  • Andrew Vanderburg, Department of Physics
  • Rodrigo Verdi, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Xiao Wang, Department of Chemistry
  • Ariel White, Department of Political Science
  • Nathan Wilmers, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Maria Yang, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Since the founding of the C2C program in 2014 by the Office of Graduate Education, the nomination process for honorees has centered on student involvement. Graduate students from all departments are invited to submit nomination letters detailing professors’ outstanding mentorship practices. A committee of graduate students and staff members then selects individuals who have shown genuine contributions to MIT’s vibrant academic community through student mentorship.

The selection committee this year included: Maria Carreira (Biology), Rima Das (Mechanical Engineering), Ahmet Gulek (Economics), Bishal Thapa (Biological Engineering), Katie Rotman (Architecture), Dóra Takács (Linguistics), Dan Korsun (Nuclear Science and Engineering), Leslie Langston (Student Mental Health and Counseling), Patricia Nesti (MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), Beth Marois (Office of Graduate Education [OGE]), Sara Lazo (OGE), and Chair Suraiya Baluch (OGE).

This year’s nomination letters highlighted unique stories of how students felt supported by professors. Students noted their mentors’ commitment to frequent meetings despite their own busy personal lives, as well as their dedication to ensuring equal access to opportunities for underrepresented and underserved students.

Some wrote about their advisors’ careful consideration of students’ needs alongside their own when faced with professional advancement opportunities; others appreciated their active support for students in the LGBTQ+ community. Lastly, students reflected on their advisors’ encouragement for open and constructive discourse around the graduate unionization vote, showing a genuine desire to hear about graduate issues.

Baluch shared, “Working with the amazing selection committee was the highlight of my work year. I was so impressed by the thoughtful consideration each nomination received. Selecting the next round of C2C nominees is always a heartwarming experience.”

“As someone who aspires to be a faculty member someday,” noted Das, “being on the selection committee … was a phenomenal opportunity in understanding the breadth and depth of possibility in how to be a caring mentor in academia.”

She continued, “It was so heartening to hear the different ways that these faculty members are going above and beyond their explicit research and teaching duties and the amazing impact that has made on so many students’ well-being and ability to be successful in graduate school.”

The Committed to Caring program continues to reinforce MIT’s culture of mentorship, inclusion, and collaboration by recognizing the contributions of outstanding professors. In the coming months, news articles will feature pairs of honorees, and a reception will be held in May.

QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 11 subjects for 2024

by MIT News |

QS World University Rankings has placed MIT in the No. 1 spot in 11 subject areas for 2024, 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 five subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Architecture/Built Environment; Biological Sciences; Chemistry; 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 12 straight years.

A new sensor detects harmful “forever chemicals” in drinking water

by Anne Trafton | MIT News |

MIT chemists have designed a sensor that detects tiny quantities of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — chemicals found in food packaging, nonstick cookware, and many other consumer products.

These compounds, also known as “forever chemicals” because they do not break down naturally, have been linked to a variety of harmful health effects, including cancer, reproductive problems, and disruption of the immune and endocrine systems.

Using the new sensor technology, the researchers showed that they could detect PFAS levels as low as 200 parts per trillion in a water sample. The device they designed could offer a way for consumers to test their drinking water, and it could also be useful in industries that rely heavily on PFAS chemicals, including the manufacture of semiconductors and firefighting equipment.

“There’s a real need for these sensing technologies. We’re stuck with these chemicals for a long time, so we need to be able to detect them and get rid of them,” says Timothy Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry at MIT and the senior author of the study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Other authors of the paper are former MIT postdoc and lead author Sohyun Park and MIT graduate student Collette Gordon.

Detecting PFAS

Coatings containing PFAS chemicals are used in thousands of consumer products. In addition to nonstick coatings for cookware, they are also commonly used in water-repellent clothing, stain-resistant fabrics, grease-resistant pizza boxes, cosmetics, and firefighting foams.

These fluorinated chemicals, which have been in widespread use since the 1950s, can be released into water, air, and soil, from factories, sewage treatment plants, and landfills. They have been found in drinking water sources in all 50 states.

In 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency created an “advisory health limit” for two of the most hazardous PFAS chemicals, known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctyl sulfonate (PFOS). These advisories call for a limit of 0.004 parts per trillion for PFOA and 0.02 parts per trillion for PFOS in drinking water.

Currently, the only way that a consumer could determine if their drinking water contains PFAS is to send a water sample to a laboratory that performs mass spectrometry testing. However, this process takes several weeks and costs hundreds of dollars.

To create a cheaper and faster way to test for PFAS, the MIT team designed a sensor based on lateral flow technology — the same approach used for rapid Covid-19 tests and pregnancy tests. Instead of a test strip coated with antibodies, the new sensor is embedded with a special polymer known as polyaniline, which can switch between semiconducting and conducting states when protons are added to the material.

The researchers deposited these polymers onto a strip of nitrocellulose paper and coated them with a surfactant that can pull fluorocarbons such as PFAS out of a drop of water placed on the strip. When this happens, protons from the PFAS are drawn into the polyaniline and turn it into a conductor, reducing the electrical resistance of the material. This change in resistance, which can be measured precisely using electrodes and sent to an external device such as a smartphone, gives a quantitative measurement of how much PFAS is present.

This approach works only with PFAS that are acidic, which includes two of the most harmful PFAS — PFOA and perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA).

A user-friendly system

The current version of the sensor can detect concentrations as low as 200 parts per trillion for PFBA, and 400 parts per trillion for PFOA. This is not quite low enough to meet the current EPA guidelines, but the sensor uses only a fraction of a milliliter of water. The researchers are now working on a larger-scale device that would be able to filter about a liter of water through a membrane made of polyaniline, and they believe this approach should increase the sensitivity by more than a hundredfold, with the goal of meeting the very low EPA advisory levels.

“We do envision a user-friendly, household system,” Swager says. “You can imagine putting in a liter of water, letting it go through the membrane, and you have a device that measures the change in resistance of the membrane.”

Such a device could offer a less expensive, rapid alternative to current PFAS detection methods. If PFAS are detected in drinking water, there are commercially available filters that can be used on household drinking water to reduce those levels. The new testing approach could also be useful for factories that manufacture products with PFAS chemicals, so they could test whether the water used in their manufacturing process is safe to release into the environment.

The research was funded by an MIT School of Science Fellowship to Gordon, a Bose Research Grant, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Park.