The 1994 genocide in Rwanda took place over a little more than three months, during which militias representing the Hutu ethnic group conducted a mass murder of members of the Tutsi ethnic group along with some politically moderate members of the Hutu and Twa groups. Soon after, local citizens and aid workers began to document the atrocities that had occurred in the country.

They were establishing evidence of a genocide that many outsiders were slow to acknowledge; other countries and the U.N. did not recognize it until 1998. By preserving scenes of massacre and victims’ remains, this effort allowed foreigners, journalists, and neighbors to witness what had happened. Though the citizens’ work was emotionally and physically challenging, they used these sites of memory to seek justice for victims who had been killed and harmed.

In so doing, these efforts turned memory into officially recognized history. Now, in a new book, MIT scholar Delia Wendel carefully explores this work, shedding new light on the people who created the state’s genocide memorials, and the decisions they made in the process — such as making the remains of the dead available for public viewing. She also examines how the state gained control of the effort and has chosen to represent the past through these memorials.

“I’m seeking to recuperate this forgotten history of the ethics of the work, while also contending with the motivations of state sovereignty that has sustained it,” says Wendel, who is the Class of 1922 Career Development Associate Professor of Urban Studies and International Development in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP).

That book, “Rwanda’s Genocide Heritage: Between Justice and Sovereignty,” is published by Duke University Press and is freely available through the MIT Libraries. In it, Wendel uncovers new details about the first efforts to preserve the memory of the genocide, analyzes the social and political dynamics, and examines their impact on people and public spaces.

“The shift from memory to history is important because it also requires recognition that is official or more public in nature,” Wendel says. “Survivors, their kin, their relatives, they know their histories. What they’re wishing to happen is a form of repair, or justice, or empowerment, that comes with disclosing those histories. That truth-telling aspect is really important.”

Conversations and memory

Wendel’s book was well over a decade in the making — and emerged from a related set of scholarly inquiries about peace-building activities in the wake of genocide. For this project, about memorializing genocide, Wendel visited over 30 villages in Rwanda over a span of many years, gradually making connections and building dialogues with citizens, in addition to conducting more conventional social science research.

“Speaking with rual residents started to unlock a lot of different types of conversations,” Wendel says of those visits. “A good deal of those conversations had to do with memory, and with relationships to place, neighbors, and authority.” She adds: “These are topics that people are very hesitant to speak about, and rightly so. This has been a book that took a long time to research and build some semblance of trust.”

During her research, Wendel also talked at length with some key figures involved in the process, including Louis Kanamugire, a Rwandan who became the first head of the country’s post-war Genocide Memorial Commission. Kanamugire, who lost his parents in the genocide, felt it was necessary to preserve and display the remains of genocide victims, including at four key sites that later become official state memorials.

This process involved, as Wendel puts it, the “gruesome” work of cleaning and preserving bodies and bones and preserving material remains to provide both material evidence of genocide and the grounds for beginning the work of societal repair and individual healing.

Wendel also uncovers, in detail for the first time, the work done by Mario Ibarra, a Chilean aid worker for the U.N. who also investigated atrocities, photographed evidence extensively, conducted preservation work, and contributed to the country’s Genocide Memorial Commission as well. The relationships between global human rights practice and genocide survivors seeking justice, in terms of preserving and documenting evidence, is at the core of the book and, Wendel believes, a previously underappreciated aspect of this topic.

“The story of Rwanda memorialization that has typically been told is one of state control,” Wendel says. “But in the beginning, the government followed independent initiatives by this human rights worker and local residents who really spurred this on.”

In the book, Wendel also examines how Rwanda’s memorialization practices relates to those of other countries, often in the so-called Global South. This phenomenon is something she terms “trauma heritage,” and has followed similar trajectories across countries in Africa and South America, for instance.

“Trauma heritage is the act of making visible the violence that had been actively hidden, and intervening in the dynamics of power,” she says. “Making such public spaces for silenced pain is a way of seeking recognition of those harms, and [seeking] forms of justice and repair.”

The tensions of memorialization

To be clear, Rwanda has been able to construct genocide memorials in the first place because, in the mid-1990s, Tutsi troops regained power in the country by defeating their Hutu adversaries. Subsequently, in a state without unlimited free expression, the government has considerable control over the content and forms of memorialization that take place.

Meanwhile, there have always been differing views about, say, displaying victims’ remains, and to what degree such a practice underlines their humanity or emphasizes the dehumanizing treatment they suffered. Then too, atrocities can produce a wide range of psychological responses among the living, including survivors’ guilt and the sheer difficulty many experience in expressing what they have witnessed. The process of memorialization, in such circumstances, will likely be fraught.

“The book is about the tensions and paradoxes between the ethics of this work and its politics, which have a lot to do with state sovereignty and control,” Wendel says. “It’s rooted in the tension between what’s invisible and what’s visible, between this bid to be seen and to recognize the humanity of the victims and yet represent this dehumanizing violence. These are irresolvable dilemmas that were felt by the people doing this work.”

Or, as Wendel writes in the book, Rwandans and others immersed in similar struggles for justice around the world have had to grapple with the “messy politics of repair, searching for seemingly impossible redress for injustice.”

Other experts have praised Wendel’s book, such as Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a professor at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, who studies the psychological effects of mass violence. Gobodo-Madikizela has cited Wendel’s “extraordinary narratives” about the book’s principal figures, observing that they “not only preserve the remains but also reclaim the victims’ humanity. … Wendel shows how their labor becomes a defiant insistence on visibility that transforms the act of cleaning into a form of truth-telling, making injustice materially and spatially undeniable.”

For her part, Wendel hopes the book will engage readers interested in multiple related issues, including Rwandan and African history, the practices and politics of public memory, human rights and peace-building, and the design of public memorials and related spaces, including those built in the aftermath of traumatic historical episodes.

“Rwanda’s genocide heritage remains an important endeavor in memory justice, even if its politics need to be contended with at the same time,” Wendel says. 

Running large companies in construction, logistics, energy, and manufacturing requires careful coordination between millions of people, devices, and systems. For more than a decade, Samsara has helped those companies connect their assets to get work done more intelligently.

Founded by John Bicket SM ’05 and Sanjit Biswas SM ’05, Samsara’s platform gives companies with physical operations a central hub to track and learn from workers, equipment, and other infrastructure. Layered on top of that platform are real-time analytics and notifications designed to prevent accidents, reduce risks, save fuel, and more.

Tens of thousands of customers have used Samsara’s platform to improve their operations since its founding in 2015. Home Depot, for instance, used Samsara’s artificial intelligence-equipped dashcams to reduce their total auto liability claims by 65 percent in one year. Maxim Crane Works saved more than $13 million in maintenance costs using Samsara’s equipment and vehicle diagnostic data in 2024. Mohawk Industries, the world’s largest flooring manufacturer, improved their route efficiency and saved $7.75 million annually.

“It’s all about real-world impact,” says Biswas, Samsara’s CEO. “These organizations have complex operations and are functioning at a massive scale. Workers are driving millions of miles and consuming tons of fuel. If you can understand what’s happening and run analysis in the cloud, you can find big efficiency improvements. In terms of safety, these workers are putting their lives at risk every day to keep this infrastructure running. You can literally save lives if you can reduce risk.”

Finding big problems

Biswas and Bicket started PhD programs at MIT in 2002, both conducting research around networking in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). They eventually applied their studies to build a wireless network called MIT RoofNet.

Upon graduating with master’s degrees, Biswas and Bicket decided to commercialize the technologies they worked on, founding the company Meraki in 2006.

“How do you get big Wi-Fi networks out in the world?” Biswas asks. “With MIT RoofNet, we covered Cambridge in Wi-Fi. We wanted to enable other people to build big Wi-Fi networks and make Wi-Fi go mainstream for larger campuses and offices.”

Over the next six years, Meraki’s technology was used to create millions of Wi-Fi networks around the world. In 2012, Meraki was acquired by Cisco. Biswas and Bicket left Cisco in 2015, unsure of what they’d work on next.

“The way we found ourselves to Samsara was through the same curiosity we had as graduate students,” Biswas says. “This time it dealt more with the planet’s infrastructure. We were thinking about how utilities work, and how construction happens at the scale of cities and states. It drew us into operations, which is the infrastructure backbone of the planet.”

As the founders learned about industries like logistics, utilities, and construction, they realized they could use their technical background to improve safety and efficiency.

“All these industries have a lot in common,” Biswas says. “They have a lot of field workers — often thousands of them — they have a lot of assets like trucks and equipment, and they’re trying to orchestrate it all. The throughline was the importance of data.”

When they founded Samsara 10 years ago, many people were still collecting field data with pen and paper.

“Because of our technical background, we knew that if you could collect the data and run sophisticated algorithms like AI over it, you could get a ton of insights and improve the way those operations run,” Biswas says.

Biswas says extracting insights from data is easy. Making field-ready products and getting them into the hands of frontline workers took longer.

Samsara started by tapping into existing sensors in buildings, cars, and other assets. They also built their own, including AI-equipped cameras and GPS trackers that can monitor driving behavior. That formed the foundation of Samsara’s Connected Operations Platform. On top of that, Samsara Intelligence processes data in the cloud and provides insights like ways to calculate the best routes for commercial vehicles, be more proactive with maintenance, and reduce fuel consumption.

Samsara’s platform can be used to detect if a commercial vehicle or snowplow driver is on their phone and send an audio message nudging them to stay safe and focused. The platform can also deliver training and coaching.

“That’s the kind of thing that reduces risk, because workers are way less likely to be distracted,” Biswas says. “If you do for millions of workers, you reduce risk at scale.”

The platform also allows managers to query their data in a ChatGPT-style interface, asking questions such as: Who are my safest drivers? Which vehicles need maintenance? And what are my least fuel-efficient trucks?

“Our platform helps recognize frontline workers who are safe and efficient in their job,” Biswas says. “These people are largely unsung heroes. They keep our planet running, but they don’t hear ‘thank you’ very often. Samsara helps companies recognize the safest workers on the field and give them recognition and rewards. So, it’s about modernizing equipment but also improving the experience of millions of people that help run this vital infrastructure.”

Continuing to grow

Today Samsara processes 20 trillion data points a year and monitors 90 million miles of driving. The company employs about 4,000 people across North America and Europe.

“It still feels early for us,” Biswas says. “We’ve been around for 10 years and gotten some scale, but we needed to build this platform to be able to build more products and have more impact. If you step back, operations is 40 percent of the world’s GDP, so we see a lot of opportunities to do more with this data. For instance, weather is part of Samsara Intelligence, and weather is 20 to 25 percent of the risk, and so we’re training AI models to reduce risk from the weather. And on the sustainability side, the more data we have, the more we can help optimize for things like fuel consumption or transitioning to electric vehicles. Maintenance is another fascinating data problem.”

The founders have also maintained a connection with MIT — and not just because the City of Boston’s Department of Public Works and the MBTA are customers. Last year, the Biswas Family Foundation announced funding for a four-year postdoctoral fellowship program at MIT for early-stage researchers working to improve health care.

Biswas says Samsara’s journey has been incredibly rewarding and notes the company is well-positioned to leverage advances in AI to further its impact going forward.

“It’s been a lot of fun and also a lot of hard work,” Biswas says. “What’s exciting is that each decade of the company feels different. It’s almost like a new chapter — or a whole new book. Right now, there’s so many incredible things happening with data and AI. It feels as exciting as it did in the early days of the company. It feels very much like a startup.”

As a college student, Kevin Power never considered working in supply chain management; in fact, he didn’t know it was an option. He earned an undergraduate degree in manufacturing engineering while working full time at an oil refinery, which demanded a rigorous routine of shift work, long days, and evening classes.

After graduation, he found himself searching for new learning opportunities, and stumbled upon the online courses of the MITx MicroMasters Program in Supply Chain Management, an online program of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Starting with Supply Chain Analytics (SC0x), Power was drawn in immediately by how directly applicable the lessons were to real work. 

“So many courses that you do are more theoretical,” he reflects. “Everything I learned, I could apply it directly to my work and see the value in doing it. So as soon as I finished Supply Chain Analytics, I decided, OK, I’ll finish the whole program.” What he didn’t yet know was that he belonged to the very audience the MicroMasters was designed for — lifelong learners. Learners are often working professionals who want deep, flexible training while continuing their careers.

After completing the five-course MicroMasters track and earning his credential, Power uncovered another opportunity: the MIT SCM Blended Master’s Program, which pairs the online credential with a one-semester, on-campus program, resulting in a master of applied science degree in supply chain management.

For Power, the blend of online and in-person learning proved pivotal. He describes his MicroMasters experience as fertile ground for deep, self-paced study. “I’m a very introverted kind of learner, so I prefer to just learn out of a textbook and online,” he says. But, once in the MIT SCM program, he tapped into the soft skills he needs to stand out in the industry. “When I came to campus, it was more about networking and being able to communicate with executives, on top of our academic work,” he says. The immersive environment of combining scholarly rigor with real-world experience among peers across the supply chain industry is at the heart of what the blended program aims to facilitate.

During his time on campus, Power’s research included simulation modeling in port shipping and generative-AI–driven projects focused on supply chain resilience. “I had never done simulation modeling before, and right now it’s huge in the industry,” he says. “If I were trying to apply for a simulation modeling job, I’m sure it would help me greatly having done this.” 

His project, completed with fellow MIT SCM student Yassine Lahlou-Kamal, was one of the winners at the 2025 Annual MIT Global SCALE Network Supply Chain Student Research Expo, in which students showcased their industry-sponsored thesis and capstone projects. This experience pays off in his current work with Elenna Dugundji in her Deep Knowledge Lab for Supply Chain and Logistics.

Beyond academics and research, Power threw himself into the fast-paced world of hackathons, despite having never participated in one before. “I’m very competitive,” Power confesses, “and I feel like I learn something new every time.” His first effort, an internal MIT competition called Hack-Nation’s Global AI Hackathon, earned him a win with an AI sports-betting agent project that fuses model-driven analysis with web scraping. Soon after, he tackled the OpenAI Red Teaming Challenge on Kaggle. Despite joining the competition halfway through the 15-day window, he raced through the final week and was selected as one of the winners. “It gave me a lot of confidence … that the things I’m working on right now are cutting-edge, even in the eyes of OpenAI.”

In terms of his return on investment in the degree, Power says, “I’m getting so much value out of being here. Even from just doing the Kaggle competition, I won more than the cost of my full MIT degree.” Long-term, Power has been impressed that “as far as I know, everybody that was looking for a job in the supply chain program has one.” The data back him up, as every student from the MIT SCM residential program Class of 2025 secured a job within six months of graduation.

Now a current master’s student in the MIT Technology and Policy Program, looking ahead, Power says, “I want to do a startup. A lot of the ideas came from research I’ve done here.” 

Reflecting on the transformation he’s experienced in just 10 months of the program, he calls it “crazy.” “The SCM program really is amazing … I’d recommend it to anyone.”

Born and raised in Japan as part of a military family, Christine Pilcavage knows first-hand about the value of an immersive approach to exploration. 

“Any experience in a different context improves an individual,” says Pilcavage, who has also lived in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Kenya. 

It’s that ethos that Pilcavage brings to her role as managing director of MISTI Japan, which connects MIT students and faculty to Institute collaborators in Japan. In her role, Pilcavage sends students to Japan for internship and research opportunities. She also shares Japanese culture on campus with activities like Ikebana classes during Independent Activities Period and a Japanese Film Festival.

MIT’s connection to Japan dates back before 1874, when its first Japanese student graduated. Later, 1911 saw the foundation of the MIT Association of Japan, Japan’s first MIT trans-Pacific alumni club. That organization later evolved into the MIT Club of Japan. 

MISTI Japan predates the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI)’s creation. The MIT-Japan Program was established in 1981 to prepare MIT students to be better scientists and engineers who understand and work effectively with Japan. The program sought to foster a deeper U.S.-Japan collaboration in science and technology amidst Japan's growing economic and technological power. MIT-Japan began sending students to Japan in 1983. 

Students in the MIT-Japan Program complete a three-to-12-month internship at their host institution, and the immersive experiences are invaluable. “Japan is so different from the Western world,” Pilcavage notes. “For example, in Japanese, verbs end sentences, so it’s important to develop patience and listen carefully when communicating.”

Pilcavage believes there is tremendous value in creating and supporting a program like MISTI at MIT. Traveling to areas outside the Institute and the United States can expose students to diverse cultures, aid the exploration of challenges, help them discover solutions, improve language learning, and foster communication. 

“We want our students to think and create,” she says. “They need to see beyond the MIT bubble and think carefully about how to solve difficult problems and help others.”

Japan, Pilcavage continues, is monocultural in ways the United States isn’t. While English is spoken in larger cities, it’s harder to find it spoken in rural areas. “MIT students teach STEM topics to rural Japanese kids in Japanese,” Pilcavage says, citing a program that’s been teaching STEAM workshops in the tsunami-affected area in Northern Japan since 2017. “Learning to code switch means they improve their language skills while also learning important cultural nuances, like body language.”

Pilcavage emphasizes the importance of “learning differently” for MIT students and the Japanese people with whom they interact. “I wanted our students to engage with the local population,” she says, encouraging them to develop what she calls “cultural resilience.”

Journey to MIT

Pilcavage — whose educational background includes master’s degrees in international affairs and public health, and undergraduate study in economics and psychology — has also worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Japanese government, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the World Health Organization on global health and educational issues in Africa and Asia. 

Pilcavage first came to Cambridge, Massachusetts, looking for hands-on experience in public health and community outcomes in a role with Management Sciences for Health, co-founded by MIT Sloan School of Management alumnus Ron O’Connor SM ’71. There, she investigated reproductive and women’s health and supported a Japanese nonprofit affiliated with the organization.

She has since developed strong ties to Cambridge and MIT. “I was married in the MIT Chapel to an MIT alum, and our reception was held in Walker Memorial,” she says. “I was a migratory bird who landed on a tree, and my husband is the tree that has deep local roots here.” 

In keeping with her ethos of overcoming roadblocks to success, Pilcavage encourages students to challenge themselves. “I’ve tried to model that behavior throughout my career,” she says.

Following her arrival at MIT In 2013, Pilcavage worked with the Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (CITE), an MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning project established in 2012 to develop new methods for product evaluation in global development. Formerly funded by USAID, Pilcavage administered the $10 million research program, which sought to learn which low-cost interventions worked best by evaluating products designed for people living in lower-income communities. 

“It’s important to learn how to manage real-world challenges and deal with them effectively,” she argues. “Creating a collaborative environment in which people can discover solutions is how things get done.”

A career of service

Pilcavage has been recognized for her outstanding contributions to encouraging positive relations between America and Japan. She received the Foreign Minister's Commendation from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the John E. Thayer III Award from the Japan Society of Boston.

“I’m honored to join a community of people who have dedicated their lives to strengthening ties between the U.S. and Japan,” Pilcavage says when asked about the awards. “It’s exciting and humbling to be recognized for doing something I love.” 

“Chris is a determined, empathetic leader who inspires our students and is committed to advancing both MIT’s mission and U.S.-Japan relations,” says Richard Samuels, the Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT, and founder and faculty director of MISTI Japan. “I can think of no one more deserving of these awards.”

Pilcavage is excited about new MISTI Japan initiatives that are in development or already underway. “We’re launching our first global classroom with [MIT historian] Hiromu Nagahara and [lecturer in Japanese] Takako Aikawa,” she notes. “Students will visit cities like Kyoto and Hiroshima, and explore Japanese history and culture up close.”

Additionally, Pilcavage is developing social impact workshops and consistently questioning how to improve MIT Japan’s work and its impact. She’s always looking for new projects and new ways to engage and encourage students. “How can I make the program better?” she asks when considering MISTI Japan and its value to MIT and its students. 

“I tell people I have the best job in the world,” she says. “I get to share my culture with the MIT community and work with the best colleagues who are nurturing and supportive. I believe I’ve found my home here.”

EFF last summer asked a federal judge to block the federal government from using Medicaid data to identify and deport immigrants.  

We also warned about the danger of the Trump administration consolidating all of the government’s information into a single searchable, AI-driven interface with help from Palantir, a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights. 

Now we have the first evidence that our concerns have become reality. 

“Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address,” 404 Media reports today. “ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.” 

The tool – dubbed Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, 404 Media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents, among other sources. 

This revelation comes as ICE – which has gone on a surveillance technology shopping spree – floods Minneapolis with agents, violently running roughshod over the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike; President Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy military troops against protestors there. Other localities are preparing for the possibility of similar surges. 

Different government agencies necessarily collect information to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger comes when the government begins pooling that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose it was collected.

This kind of consolidation of government records provides enormous government power that can be abused. Different government agencies necessarily collect information to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger comes when the government begins pooling that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose it was collected. 

As EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn wrote in a Mercury News op-ed last August, “While couched in the benign language of eliminating government ‘data silos,’ this plan runs roughshod over your privacy and security. It’s a throwback to the rightly mocked ‘Total Information Awareness’ plans of the early 2000s that were, at least publicly, stopped after massive outcry from the public and from key members of Congress. It’s time to cry out again.” 

In addition to the amicus brief we co-authored challenging ICE’s grab for Medicaid data, EFF has successfully sued over DOGE agents grabbing personal data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, filed an amicus brief in a suit challenging ICE’s grab for taxpayer data, and sued the departments of State and Homeland Security to halt a mass surveillance program to monitor constitutionally protected speech by noncitizens lawfully present in the U.S. 

But litigation isn’t enough. People need to keep raising concerns via public discourse and Congress should act immediately to put brakes on this runaway train that threatens to crush the privacy and security of each and every person in America.  

Quantum computers could rapidly solve complex problems that would take the most powerful classical supercomputers decades to unravel. But they’ll need to be large and stable enough to efficiently perform operations. To meet this challenge, researchers at MIT and elsewhere are developing trapped-ion quantum computers based on ultra-compact photonic chips. These chip-based systems offer a scalable alternative to existing trapped-ion quantum computers, which rely on bulky optical equipment.

The ions in these quantum computers must be cooled to extremely cold temperatures to minimize vibrations and prevent errors. So far, such trapped-ion systems based on photonic chips have been limited to inefficient and slow cooling methods.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory has implemented a much faster and more energy-efficient method for cooling trapped ions using photonic chips. Their approach achieved cooling to about 10 times below the limit of standard laser cooling.

Key to this technique is a photonic chip that incorporates precisely designed antennas to manipulate beams of tightly focused, intersecting light.

The researchers’ initial demonstration takes a key step toward scalable chip-based architectures that could someday enable quantum computing systems with greater efficiency and stability.

“We were able to design polarization-diverse integrated-photonics devices, utilize them to develop a variety of novel integrated-photonics-based systems, and apply them to show very efficient ion cooling. However, this is just the beginning of what we can do using these devices. By introducing polarization diversity to integrated-photonics-based trapped-ion systems, this work opens the door to a variety of advanced operations for trapped ions that weren’t previously attainable, even beyond efficient ion cooling — all research directions we are excited to explore in the future,” says Jelena Notaros, the Robert J. Shillman Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT, a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and senior author of a paper on this architecture.

She is joined on the paper by lead authors Sabrina Corsetti, an EECS graduate student; Ethan Clements, a former postdoc who is now a staff scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory; Felix Knollmann, a graduate student in the Department of Physics; John Chiaverini, senior member of the technical staff at Lincoln Laboratory and a principal investigator in MIT’s Center for Quantum Engineering; as well as others at Lincoln Laboratory and MIT. The research appears today in two joint publications in Light: Science and Applications and Physical Review Letters.

Seeking scalability

While there are many types of quantum systems, this research is focused on trapped-ion quantum computing. In this application, a charged particle called an ion is formed by peeling an electron from an atom, and then trapped using radio-frequency signals and manipulated using optical signals.

Researchers use lasers to encode information in the trapped ion by changing its state. In this way, the ion can be used as a quantum bit, or qubit. Qubits are the building blocks of a quantum computer.

To prevent collisions between ions and gas molecules in the air, the ions are held in vacuum, often created with a device known as a cryostat. Traditionally, bulky lasers sit outside the cryostat and shoot different light beams through the cryostat’s windows toward the chip. These systems require a room full of optical components to address just a few dozen ions, making it difficult to scale to the large numbers of ions needed for advanced quantum computing. Slight vibrations outside the cryostat can also disrupt the light beams, ultimately reducing the accuracy of the quantum computer.

To get around these challenges, MIT researchers have been developing integrated-photonics-based systems. In this case, the light is emitted from the same chip that traps the ion. This improves scalability by eliminating the need for external optical components.

“Now, we can envision having thousands of sites on a single chip that all interface up to many ions, all working together in a scalable way,” Knollmann says.

But integrated-photonics-based demonstrations to date have achieved limited cooling efficiencies.

Keeping their cool

To enable fast and accurate quantum operations, researchers use optical fields to reduce the kinetic energy of the trapped ion. This causes the ion to cool to nearly absolute zero, an effective temperature even colder than cryostats can achieve.

But common methods have a higher cooling floor, so the ion still has a lot of vibrational energy after the cooling process completes. This would make it hard to use the qubits for high-quality computations.

The MIT researchers utilized a more complex approach, known as polarization-gradient cooling, which involves the precise interaction of two beams of light.

Each light beam has a different polarization, which means the field in each beam is oscillating in a different direction (up and down, side to side, etc.). Where these beams intersect, they form a rotating vortex of light that can force the ion to stop vibrating even more efficiently.

Although this approach had been shown previously using bulk optics, it hadn’t been shown before using integrated photonics.

To enable this more complex interaction, the researchers designed a chip with two nanoscale antennas, which emit beams of light out of the chip to manipulate the ion above it.

These antennas are connected by waveguides that route light to the antennas. The waveguides are designed to stabilize the optical routing, which improves the stability of the vortex pattern generated by the beams.

“When we emit light from integrated antennas, it behaves differently than with bulk optics. The beams, and generated light patterns, become extremely stable. Having these stable patterns allows us to explore ion behaviors with significantly more control,” Clements says.

The researchers also designed the antennas to maximize the amount of light that reaches the ion. Each antenna has tiny curved notches that scatter light upward, spaced just right to direct light toward the ion.

“We built upon many years of development at Lincoln Laboratory to design these gratings to emit diverse polarizations of light,” Corsetti says.

They experimented with several architectures, characterizing each to better understand how it emitted light.

With their final design in place, the researchers demonstrated ion cooling that was nearly 10 times below the limit of standard laser cooling, referred to as the Doppler limit. Their chip was able to reach this limit in about 100 microseconds, several times faster than other techniques.

“The demonstration of enhanced performance using optics integrated in the ion-trap chip lays the foundation for further integration that can allow new approaches for quantum-state manipulation, and that could improve the prospects for practical quantum-information processing,” adds Chiaverini. “Key to achieving this advance was the cross-Institute collaboration between the MIT campus and Lincoln groups, a model that we can build on as we take these next steps.”

In the future, the team plans to conduct characterization experiments on different chip architectures and demonstrate polarization-gradient cooling with multiple ions. In addition, they hope to explore other applications that could benefit from the stable light beams they can generate with this architecture.

Other authors who contributed to this research are Ashton Hattori (MIT), Zhaoyi Li (MIT), Milica Notaros (MIT), Reuel Swint (Lincoln Laboratory), Tal Sneh (MIT), Patrick Callahan (Lincoln Laboratory), May Kim (Lincoln Laboratory), Aaron Leu (MIT), Gavin West (MIT), Dave Kharas (Lincoln Laboratory), Thomas Mahony (Lincoln Laboratory), Colin Bruzewicz (Lincoln Laboratory), Cheryl Sorace-Agaskar (Lincoln Laboratory), Robert McConnell (Lincoln Laboratory), and Isaac Chuang (MIT).

This work is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the MIT Center for Quantum Engineering, the U.S. Department of Defense, an MIT Rolf G. Locher Endowed Fellowship, and an MIT Frederick and Barbara Cronin Fellowship.

This isn’t good:

We discovered a critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-21858, CVSS 10.0) in n8n that enables attackers to take over locally deployed instances, impacting an estimated 100,000 servers globally. No official workarounds are available for this vulnerability. Users should upgrade to version 1.121.0 or later to remediate the vulnerability.

Three technical links and two news links.

Electricity prices and data centers are emerging as major issues for both voters and legislators.

The move by about a dozen senators came as President Donald Trump threatens to reduce the agency's role in disaster recovery.

A proposal for sharper reductions in greenhouse gas emissions "will spur long-term investment" in solar panels, electric vehicles and other technologies.

The federal judge said he would rule soon on whether the wind project off the coast of New York can restart construction.

California Sen. Adam Schiff is leading a bipartisan effort to improve emergency services for older adults and disabled people, after many were killed in last year's Los Angeles fires.

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The use of inadequate models has left banks, insurers and asset managers accepting a “chance of failure” that is a “hundred times greater than the chance we accept of insurance company failure,” said a researcher.

An official said the nation is working with the International Finance Corp. to help unlock private capital and relieve strain on public finances.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02533-5

Oceans provide essential ecosystem services to human society, yet the climate impacts on blue capital have long been ignored. Incorporating the latest works on ocean science and economics, researchers show that accounting for the potential damage would almost double the social cost of carbon estimation.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02539-z

More frequent fires in the North American boreal are causing shifts from conifer to deciduous forests. This study finds that when deciduous forests burn, their carbon losses are driven by weather, but are lower than in conifer forests, potentially dampening climate–fire feedbacks.

The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence (SQI), a research unit in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, brings together researchers from across MIT who combine their diverse expertise to understand intelligence through tightly coupled scientific inquiry and rigorous engineering. These researchers engage in collaborative efforts spanning science, engineering, the humanities, and more. 

SQI seeks to comprehend how brains produce intelligence and how it can be replicated in artificial systems to address real-world problems that exceed the capabilities of current artificial intelligence technologies.

“In SQI, we are studying intelligence scientifically and generically, in the hope that by studying neuroscience and behavior in humans and animals, and also studying what we can build as intelligent engineering artifacts, we'll be able to understand the fundamental underlying principles of intelligence,” says Leslie Pack Kaelbling, SQI director of research and the Panasonic Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

“We in SQI believe that understanding human intelligence is one of the greatest open questions in science — right up there with the origin of the universe and our place in it, and the origin of life. The question of human intelligence has two parts: how it works, and where it comes from. If we understand those, we will see payoffs well beyond our current imaginings," says Jim DiCarlo, SQI director and the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Exploring the great mysteries of the mind

The MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence was recently renamed in recognition of a major gift from the Siegel Family Endowment that is enabling further growth in SQI’s research and activities.

SQI’s efforts are organized around missions — long-term, collaborative projects rooted in foundational questions about intelligence and supported by platforms — systems, and software that enable new research and create benchmarking and testing interfaces. 

“Ours is the only unit at MIT dedicated to building a scientific understanding of intelligence while working with researchers across the entire Institute,” DiCarlo says. “There has been remarkable progress in AI over the past decade, but I believe the next decade will bring even greater advances in our understanding of human intelligence — advances that will reshape what we call AI. By supporting us, David Siegel, the Siegel Family Endowment, and our other donors are demonstrating their confidence in our approach."

A legacy of interdisciplinary support

In 2011, David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91 founded the Siegel Family Endowment (SFE) to support organizations working at the intersections of learning, workforce, and infrastructure. SFE funds organizations addressing society’s most critical challenges while supporting innovative civic and community leaders, social entrepreneurs, researchers, and others driving this work forward. Siegel is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. While in graduate school at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, he worked on robotics in the group of Tomás Lozano-Pérez — currently the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Excellence — focusing on sensing and grasping. Later, he co-founded Two Sigma with the belief that innovative technology, AI, and data science could help uncover value in the world’s data. Today, Two Sigma drives transformation across the financial services industry in investment management, venture capital, private equity, and real estate.

Siegel explains, “The human brain may very well be the most complex physical system in the universe, yet most people haven't shown much interest in how it works. People take the mind for granted, yet wonder so much about other scientific mysteries, such as the origin of the universe. My fascination with the brain and its intersection with artificial intelligence stems from this. I don’t care whether there are commercial applications for this quest; instead, we should pursue research like that done at the MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence to advance our understanding of ourselves. As we uncover more about human intelligence, I am hopeful that we will lay the groundwork not only for advancing artificial intelligence but also for extending our own thinking.”

As a long-time champion of the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines (CBMM), a National Science Foundation-funded collaborative interdisciplinary research thrust, and one of the first donors to the MIT Quest for Intelligence, David Siegel helped lay the foundation for the research underway today. In early 2024, he founded Open Athena, a nonprofit that bridges the gap between academic research and the cutting edge of AI. Open Athena equips universities with elite AI and data engineering talent to accelerate breakthrough discoveries at scale. Siegel serves on the MIT Corporation Executive Committee, is vice-chair of the Scratch Foundation, and is a member of the Cornell Tech Council. He also sits on the boards of Re:Build Manufacturing, Khan Academy, NYC FIRST, and Carnegie Hall.

A Catalyst for Global Collaboration

MIT President Sally Kornbluth says, “Of all the donors and supporters whose generosity fueled the Quest for Intelligence, no one has been more important from the beginning than David Siegel. Without his longstanding commitment to CBMM and his support for the Quest, this community might never have formed. There’s every reason to think that David’s recent gift, which renames the Quest for Intelligence and also supports the Schwarzman College of Computing, will be even more powerful in shaping the future of this initiative and of the field itself.” She continues, “Fueled by generous donors — particularly David Siegel’s transformative gift — SQI is poised to take on an even more important role.”

SQI scientists and engineers are presenting their work broadly, publishing papers, and developing new tools and technologies that are used in research institutions worldwide, as they engage with colleagues in disciplines across the Institute and in universities and institutions around the globe. DiCarlo explains, “We're part of the Schwarzman College of Computing, at the nexus between the people interested in biology and various forms of intelligence and the people interested in AI. We're working with partners at other universities, in nonprofits, and in industry — we can't do it alone.”

“Fundamentally, we're not an AI effort. We're a human intelligence effort using the tools of engineering,” DiCarlo says. “That gives us, among other things, very useful insights for human learning and health, but also very useful tools for AI — including AI that will just work a lot better in a human world.” 

The entire SQI community of faculty, students, and staff is excited to face new challenges in the efforts to understand the fundamentals of intelligence.

New missions and next horizons

SQI research is broadening: Mission principal investigators are integrating their efforts across areas of interest, increasing their impact on the field. In the coming months, the organization plans to launch a new Social Intelligence Mission.

"We need to focus on problems that mirror natural and artificial intelligence — making sure that we are evaluating new models on tasks that mirror what humans and other natural intelligence can do,” says Nick Roy, SQI director of systems engineering and professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. He predicts that SQI’s future research will rely on asking the right questions: “[While] we are good at picking tasks that test our computational models, and we're extremely good at picking tasks that kind of align with what our models can already do, we need to get better at choosing tasks and benchmarks that also elicit something about natural intelligence,” he says.

On November 24, 2025, faculty, staff, students, and supporters gathered at an event titled “The Next Horizon: Quest’s Future” to celebrate SQI’s next chapter. The event consisted of an afternoon of research updates, a panel discussion, and a poster session on new and evolving research, and was attended by David Siegel, representatives from the Siegel Family Endowment, and various members of the MIT Corporation. Recordings of the presentations from the event are available on SQI’s YouTube channel.

Generative artificial intelligence models have left such an indelible impact on digital content creation that it’s getting harder to recall what the internet was like before it. You can call on these AI tools for clever projects such as videos and photos — but their flair for the creative hasn’t quite crossed over into the physical world just yet.

So why haven’t we seen generative AI-enabled personalized objects, such as phone cases and pots, in places like homes, offices, and stores yet? According to MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers, a key issue is the mechanical integrity of the 3D model.

While AI can help generate personalized 3D models that you can fabricate, those systems don’t often consider the physical properties of the 3D model. MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) PhD student and CSAIL engineer Faraz Faruqi has explored this trade-off, creating generative AI-based systems that can make aesthetic changes to designs while preserving functionality, and another that modifies structures with the desired tactile properties users want to feel.

Making it real 

Together with researchers at Google, Stability AI, and Northeastern University, Faruqi has now found a way to make real-world objects with AI, creating items that are both durable and exhibit the user’s intended appearance and texture. With the AI-powered “MechStyle” system, users simply upload a 3D model or select a preset asset of things like vases and hooks, and prompt the tool using images or text to create a personalized version. A generative AI model then modifies the 3D geometry, while MechStyle simulates how those changes will impact particular parts, ensuring vulnerable areas remain structurally sound. When you’re happy with this AI-enhanced blueprint, you can 3D print it and use it in the real world.

You could select a model of, say, a wall hook, and the material you’ll be printing it with (for example, plastics like polylactic acid). Then, you can prompt the system to create a personalized version, with directions like, “generate a cactus-like hook.” The AI model will work in tandem with the simulation module and generate a 3D model resembling a cactus while also having the structural properties of a hook. This green, ridged accessory can then be used to hang up mugs, coats, and backpacks. Such creations are possible thanks, in part, to a stylization process, where the system changes a model’s geometry based on its understanding of the text prompt, and working with the feedback received from the simulation module.

According to CSAIL researchers, 3D stylization used to come with unintended consequences. Their formative study revealed that only about 26 percent of 3D models remained structurally viable after they were modified, meaning that the AI system didn’t understand the physics of the models it was modifying.

“We want to use AI to create models that you can actually fabricate and use in the real world,” says Faruqi, who is a lead author on a paper presenting the project. “So MechStyle actually simulates how GenAI-based changes will impact a structure. Our system allows you to personalize the tactile experience for your item, incorporating your personal style into it while ensuring the object can sustain everyday use.”

This computational thoroughness could eventually help users personalize their belongings, creating a unique pair of glasses with speckled blue and beige dots resembling fish scales, for example. It also produced a pillbox with a rocky texture that’s checkered with pink and aqua spots. The system’s potential extends to crafting unique home and office decor, like a lampshade resembling red magma. It can even design assistive technology fit to users’ specifications, such as finger splints to aid with dexterous injuries and utensil grips to aid with motor impairments.

In the future, MechStyle could also be useful in creating prototypes for accessories and other handheld products you might sell in a toy shop, hardware store, or craft boutique. The goal, CSAIL researchers say, is for both expert and novice designers to spend more time brainstorming and testing out different 3D designs, instead of assembling and customizing items by hand.

Staying strong

To ensure MechStyle’s creations could withstand daily use, the researchers augmented their generative AI technology with a type of physics simulation called a finite element analysis (FEA). You can imagine a 3D model of an item, such as a pair of glasses, with a sort of heat map indicating which regions are structurally viable under a realistic amount of weight, and which ones aren’t. As AI refines this model, the physics simulations highlight which parts of the model are getting weaker and prevent further changes.

Faruqi adds that running these simulations every time a change is made drastically slows down the AI process, so MechStyle is designed to know when and where to do additional structural analyses. “MechStyle’s adaptive scheduling strategy keeps track of what changes are happening in specific points in the model. When the genAI system makes tweaks that endanger certain regions of the model, our approach simulates the physics of the design again. MechStyle will make subsequent modifications to make sure the model doesn’t break after fabrication.”

Combining the FEA process with adaptive scheduling allowed MechStyle to generate objects that were as high as 100 percent structurally viable. Testing out 30 different 3D models with styles resembling things like bricks, stones, and cacti, the team found that the most efficient way to create structurally viable objects was to dynamically identify weak regions and tweak the generative AI process to mitigate its effect. In these scenarios, the researchers found that they could either stop stylization completely when a particular stress threshold was reached, or gradually make smaller refinements to prevent at-risk areas from approaching that mark.

The system also offers two different modes: a freestyle feature that allows AI to quickly visualize different styles on your 3D model, and a MechStyle one that carefully analyzes the structural impacts of your tweaks. You can explore different ideas, then try the MechStyle mode to see how those artistic flourishes will affect the durability of particular regions of the model.

CSAIL researchers add that while their model can ensure your model remains structurally sound before being 3D printed, it’s not yet able to improve 3D models that weren’t viable to begin with. If you upload such a file to MechStyle, you’ll receive an error message, but Faruqi and his colleagues intend to improve the durability of those faulty models in the future.

What’s more, the team hopes to use generative AI to create 3D models for users, instead of stylizing presets and user-uploaded designs. This would make the system even more user-friendly, so that those who are less familiar with 3D models, or can’t find their design online, can simply generate it from scratch. Let’s say you wanted to fabricate a unique type of bowl, and that 3D model wasn’t available in a repository; AI could create it for you instead.

“While style-transfer for 2D images works incredibly well, not many works have explored how this transfer to 3D,” says Google Research Scientist Fabian Manhardt, who wasn’t involved in the paper. “Essentially, 3D is a much more difficult task, as training data is scarce and changing the object’s geometry can harm its structure, rendering it unusable in the real world. MechStyle helps solve this problem, allowing for 3D stylization without breaking the object’s structural integrity via simulation. This gives people the power to be creative and better express themselves through products that are tailored towards them.”

Farqui wrote the paper with senior author Stefanie Mueller, who is an MIT associate professor and CSAIL principal investigator, and two other CSAIL colleagues: researcher Leandra Tejedor SM ’24, and postdoc Jiaji Li. Their co-authors are Amira Abdel-Rahman PhD ’25, now an assistant professor at Cornell University, and Martin Nisser SM ’19, PhD ’24; Google researcher Vrushank Phadnis; Stability AI Vice President of Research Varun Jampani; MIT Professor and Center for Bits and Atoms Director Neil Gershenfeld; and Northeastern University Assistant Professor Megan Hofmann.

Their work was supported by the MIT-Google Program for Computing Innovation. It was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on Computational Fabrication in November.