Rationale engineering generates a compact new tool for gene therapy

Scientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have re-engineered a compact RNA-guided enzyme they found in bacteria into an efficient, programmable editor of human DNA.  The protein they created, called...

An anomaly detection framework anyone can use

Sarah Alnegheimish’s research interests reside at the intersection of machine learning and systems engineering. Her objective: to make machine learning systems more accessible, transparent, and trustworthy. Alnegheimish is a PhD student in Principal Research Scientist...

Building networks of data science talent

The rise of artificial intelligence resurfaces a question older than the abacus: If we have a tool to do it for us, why learn to do it ourselves?  The answer, argues MIT electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) Professor Devavrat Shah, hasn’t changed:...

MIT announces the Initiative for New Manufacturing

MIT today launched its Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM), an Institute-wide effort to reinfuse U.S. industrial production with leading-edge technologies, bolster crucial U.S. economic sectors, and ignite job creation. The initiative will encompass advanced...

Learning how to predict rare kinds of failures

On Dec. 21, 2022, just as peak holiday season travel was getting underway, Southwest Airlines went through a cascading series of failures in their scheduling, initially triggered by severe winter weather in the Denver area. But the problems spread through their...

The sweet taste of a new idea

Behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan has never forgotten the pleasure he felt the first time he tasted a delicious crisp, yet gooey Levain cookie. He compares the experience to when he encounters new ideas. “That hedonic pleasure is pretty much the same pleasure...