In 2024, Harvard University’s Office of the Provost launched the Catalyst Professorship to strengthen ties between academia and the private sector. This senior faculty position allows academics to engage in industry roles while maintaining their university commitments. Doug Melton, Boaz Barak, and Michael Brenner have been named as the inaugural Catalyst Professors. President Alan M….
MIT researchers, along with colleagues, have created a more efficient and user-friendly method for networking engineers to detect potential system failures before they result in significant issues, such as cloud service outages affecting millions of users. This approach reveals hidden vulnerabilities that could cause a shortcut algorithm to unexpectedly fail during deployment. The new method…
Many students hesitate to express their thoughts, not due to a lack of ideas, but out of fear that their thoughts may not be “correct.” In an introductory music class, students write about unfamiliar pieces on the first day, and this unfamiliarity often leads to self-censorship. They form impressions and have the language to describe…
Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are commonly used to gauge teaching effectiveness and influence decisions on promotion, tenure, contract renewal, and merit pay. Despite their widespread application, research increasingly indicates that SETs often reflect students’ perceptions and emotions rather than the true quality of course design or teaching effectiveness. These findings cast doubt on the…
In the late 2000s, physicians observed that patients started arriving at appointments with questionable medical information sourced from the internet, says internist and AI researcher Adam Rodman. According to Rodman, around 68 percent of adults have previously used search engines for medical advice. However, AI chatbots are now consulted by about 32 percent of adults,…
In 1960, engineers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in India developed the nation’s first computer, named the “Automatic Calculator.” Equipped with ferrite-core memory similar to IBM’s advanced machines, this device, known as TIFRAC, was a significant achievement despite limited resources. “The engineers hadn’t seen an operational computer before,” says Dwai Banerjee, an…
A peculiar pair of planets is orbiting a star roughly 190 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy. This strange duo, a hot Jupiter and a mini-Neptune, has puzzled astronomers since it was discovered in 2020. Now, researchers from MIT have examined the mini-Neptune’s atmosphere, revealing insights into the origins of this unusual planetary…
The Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute holds over 600 scrapbooks that offer unique insights into lesser-known histories and the daily lives of people from past eras. These collections are particularly valuable for understanding women’s history, which is often underrepresented in official records. Victor Betts, a curator at the library, highlights the diverse nature of…
In 1985, the Innovative Design Fund advertised in Scientific American, offering up to $10,000 for innovative prototypes in clothing, home decor, and textiles. William Freeman, who was an electrical engineer at Polaroid and is now an MIT professor, submitted a unique idea: a three-sided zipper. Unlike traditional zippers for clothing, this was envisioned to switch…
Annually, over 1,500 researchers at MIT.nano depend on more than 200 tools and instruments for experiments, generating 160,000 hours of work in 88,000 tool uses. This requires a robust operational system to ensure fair access and smooth research processes. The facility uses an automated reservation system to coordinate demands and maintain an efficient shared lab…
