Junior Peña, neutrino hunter

August 26, 2025
Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Junior Peña learned to keep his eyes down and his schedule full. In his neighborhood, a glance could invite trouble, and many kids—including his older brother—were pulled into gang culture. He knew early on that he wanted something else. With his parents working long hours, he went to…

MIT is worth fighting for

August 26, 2025
As I write in late July, we’re contending with a major tax increase on the annual returns from MIT’s endowment as well as other investments and assets. This new tax burden will strain the resources we use to support research, innovation, and student scholarships and financial aid—the heart and soul of the Institute.  And the…

Infinite Threads

August 26, 2025
Textiles account for 5% of landfill space—and clothing made with polyester can take up to 200 years to decompose. Massachusetts tackled the problem by banning disposal of clothing and fabrics in 2022. And Infinite Threads, a spinoff of the Undergraduate Association Sustainability Committee, is addressing it by collecting lightly used clothing from the MIT community…

Fix damaged art in hours with AI

August 26, 2025
Art restoration takes steady hands and a discerning eye. For centuries, conservators have identified areas needing repair and then mixed the exact shades needed to fill in one area at a time. Restoring a single painting can take anywhere from a few weeks to over a decade. Now an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering…

Anthropic settles AI book-training lawsuit with authors

August 26, 2025
Anthropic has settled a class action lawsuit with a group of fiction and non-fiction authors, as announced in a filing on Tuesday with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Anthropic had won a partial victory in a lower court ruling, and was in the process of appealing that ruling. No details of the settlement were […]