Faculty

In late November, faculty, staff, and students from across MIT participated in MIT Generative AI Week. The programming included a flagship full-day symposium as well as four subject-specific symposia, all aimed at fostering a dialogue about the opportunities and potential applications of generative artificial intelligence technologies across a diverse range of disciplines. “These events are one expression of our conviction …

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek mathematician Euclid, known to many as the father of geometry, changed the way we think about shapes. Building off those ancient foundations and millennia of mathematical progress since, Justin Solomon is using modern geometric techniques to solve thorny problems that often seem to have nothing to do with shapes. For instance, perhaps a …

Two MIT faculty were recently honored by Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt. MathWorks Professor Jörn Dunkel received the 2023 Schmidt Science Polymath award, and professor of computational cognitive science Josh Tenenbaum was named a Schmidt Futures AI2050 Senior Fellow. Also winning a Schmidt Science Polymath award was Surya Ganguli ’98, MNG ’98, who is an …

Speaking at the “Generative AI: Shaping the Future” symposium on Nov. 28, the kickoff event of MIT’s Generative AI Week, keynote speaker and iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks warned attendees against uncritically overestimating the capabilities of this emerging technology, which underpins increasingly powerful tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. “Hype leads to hubris, and hubris leads to conceit, and conceit …

The National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 100 new members to join their esteemed ranks in 2023, among them five MIT faculty members and seven additional affiliates. MIT professors Daniel Anderson, Regina Barzilay, Guoping Feng, Darrell Irvine, and Morgen Sheng were among the new members. Justin Hanes PhD ’96, Said Ibrahim MBA ’16, and Jennifer West ’92, along …

Five MIT professors have been selected to receive the 2023 Simons Investigators awards from the Simons Foundation. Virginia Vassilevska Williams and Vinod Vaikuntanathan are both professors in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and principal investigators in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Aram Harrow and Leonid Mirny are professors in the Department of Physics, …

Innovating at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and engineering, Professor Brad Pentelute and the Pentelute Lab at MIT invent new chemistry, platforms, and techniques that might revolutionize therapeutics. Their formula in brief: nature-inspired research that begins at the molecular level, infused with state-of-the-art machine learning and automation, aimed at solving real-world problems. Take, for example, biotechnology’s longstanding protein delivery problem. …

There has been a remarkable surge in the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence to address a wide range of problems and challenges. While their adoption, particularly with the rise of AI, is reshaping nearly every industry sector, discipline, and area of research, such innovations often expose unexpected consequences that involve new norms, new expectations, and new rules and laws. …

The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing named Armando Solar-Lezama as the inaugural Distinguished Professor of Computing, effective July 1. Solar-Lezama is the first person appointed to this position generously endowed by Professor Jae S. Lim of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Established in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, the chair is being awarded …

MIT associate professors Ellen Roche of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) and Justin Solomon of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) have been named the 2023 winners of MIT’s annual Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award. Established in fall 1982, the award exists as a permanent tribute to the late Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton …

Yael Tauman Kalai PhD ’06, an MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) adjunct professor, member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research has been awarded the 2022 ACM Prize in Computing for “breakthroughs in verifiable delegation of computation and fundamental contributions to cryptography” by the Association for …

Each year, MIT’s School of Engineering gives the Junior Bose Award to a junior faculty member who has made outstanding contributions as an educator. The award is given to a member of faculty who is up for promotion from assistant professor to associate professor without tenure. The 2023 Junior Bose Award has been given to two outstanding educators: Jacob Andreas, …

The National Academy of Sciences has elected 120 members and 23 international members, including five faculty members from MIT. Joshua Angrist, Gang Chen, Catherine Drennan, Dina Katabi, and Gregory Stephanopoulos were elected in recognition of their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Membership to the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest honors a scientist can receive …

Words, data, and algorithms combine, An article about LLMs, so divine. A glimpse into a linguistic world, Where language machines are unfurled. It was a natural inclination to task a large language model (LLM) like CHATGPT with creating a poem that delves into the topic of large language models, and subsequently utilize said poem as an introductory piece for this …

Big ideas took the stage on Monday morning, ahead of the inauguration of MIT’s 18th president, Sally Kornbluth. As final preparations were underway on Killian Court for the afternoon’s ceremonies, members of the MIT community gathered to welcome Kornbluth with an academic symposium exploring the theme “Where Big Ideas Come From — and Why They Matter.” Held at MIT’s Samberg …