•Using 1980–2022 data, researchers found the strongest trends in Alaska, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada; the weakest were in Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Arkansas.
•Warming was strongest in summer and fall, particularly September and November.
•Alaska recorded the highest historical maximum-temperature warming: 2.5°C per degree of global warming; Hawaii recorded the lowest, at 0.8°C.
By Mark Dwortzan | Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy
•Five MIT faculty members and two alumni joined the cohort announced by Schmidt Sciences.
•Senior Fellow Sendhil Mullainathan will study how AI-detected patterns can be translated into testable theories.
•Four early-career fellows from MIT will research AI training, public input for lawmakers, biological enzyme functions and the effects of widespread AI reliance.
•MIT alumni Irene Chen and Allison Z. Koenecke were also named early-career fellows; former MIT postdoc Juan Carlos Perdomo was named as well.
By Amanda Moore | Jane Halpern | MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems | Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
•Climate pressures, resource limits, geopolitical instability and rising demand are converging faster than in previous infrastructure eras.
•Ali Jadbabaie says future projects must use less water, energy and materials while producing less carbon.
•AI and digital tools could improve infrastructure design, but their effects are still uncertain.
•Interconnected systems raise the risk that failures in power, communications or supply chains will disrupt other services.
•MIT and partner institutions created the World Infrastructure Forum, with five working groups and an advisory group of more than 30 leaders. Its Oct. 28 meeting in Madrid will examine infrastructure decisions.
By Stephanie Martinovich | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
•The academy announced 100 new members at its annual meeting on Oct. 19.
•The MIT affiliates are faculty member Michael Yaffe and alumni Steven Allen Abrams, Susan L. Ettner, Diane Medved Harper, Albert Icksang Ko, Jennifer Lewis and Alexander Marson.
•Election recognizes outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service in health and medicine.
•Paris Smaragdis joined MIT’s faculty in 2025 after 15 years at the University of Illinois.
•His group develops tools for sound separation, audio analysis and enhancement, and music-making; one project aims to give musicians constructive feedback.
•His sound-separation work helped restore archival Beatles recordings for the 2021 documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back”; the production team won a 2022 Emmy for sound editing.
•The system is designed to refresh encryption keys rapidly across terminals worldwide, including in contested or bandwidth-constrained conditions.
•Terminals pull monthly key packages and receive daily satellite broadcasts, allowing offline devices to reconnect and captured devices to be excluded.
•The prototype is the reference design for industry’s operational system, which will serve satellites, military user terminals and ground hubs.
•The first PATS space-hub cryptographic unit received NSA certification last year.
•Prabha Jha and 20 other leaders released “The AI Anthology,” examining AI’s influence across industries and society.
•Jha developed the book after MIT xPRO’s AI for Senior Executives program, where peer discussions shaped her perspective on AI beyond business efficiency.
•She is now working on an initiative to help small and medium-sized businesses plan and assess AI implementation.
•Groups of five to eight students share spiritual backgrounds, then discuss topics spanning faith and everyday life.
•The program, launched in 2005 with a U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant, is now supported by MIT’s Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life.
•Student leader Angeline Peng says participants’ opinions can change over time as they build friendships and discuss difficult questions.
•The Sept. 21–27 event drew more than 700 attendees to MIT-organized events at a Manhattan hotel.
•MIT’s Climate Project and eight departments, labs, centers and initiatives organized sessions on topics including data centers, super pollutants and climate innovation.
•MIT and the Bezos Earth Fund convened leaders to discuss gaps between climate inventions and large-scale deployment, including testing, validation and early-stage funding.
By Marika McCoola | Office of the Vice President for Energy and Climate
•Simulations found the structures about 3.5 times stiffer than those made with some other structural-origami techniques, using about two-thirds as much material.
•The modular units are cut from flat sheets, folded and connected with hand tools; the assembled shells need no interior support columns.
•A team without professional construction experience assembled a 23-foot folded-aluminum sculpture in days. Researchers plan to test the method in larger architectural structures.
•The public resource aims to help researchers, policymakers and practitioners use evidence and evaluate programs to reduce homelessness and improve housing stability.
•It offers briefs on five interventions, seven evaluation-training modules, and a review of 40 evaluations covering 18 programs in North America.