MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The nondenominational MIT Chapel was named by Financial Times readers as one of the best places of worship in the world. “The Eero Saarinen-designed chapel at MIT is otherworldly,” they write. “This is what spiritual contemplation probably looks like in another galaxy.” 

Prof. Sarah Millholland, Prof. Christian Wolf, Prof. Emil Verner, Prof. Darcy McRose, Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi, Prof. Mohsen Ghaffari and Prof. Ariel Furst have received the 2025 Sloan Research Fellowship for “being among the most promising scientific researchers currently working in their fields,” reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. “Sloan Research Fellows are chosen in seven scientific and technical fields—chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics,” explains Nietzel. 

Prof. Richard Binzel, creator of the Torino scale that NASA uses to measure the threat of incoming objects, speaks with Brandon Truitt of CBS Boston about his quest to track 2024 YR4, an asteroid that astronomers are closely monitoring to see how close it might come to Earth in 2032. “As we get more and more measurements, we keep tracking the asteroid, that uncertainty window, that broad range of where it could go it's going to shrink and shrink," says Binzel. "Until the Earth falls outside of that pathway, we're going to see these probabilities bounce around."

Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner spotlights Lybra Bio, an MIT startup that is developing a “patch to treat skin conditions like psoriasis and alopecia areata, which causes hair loss.” Kirsner notes that Lybra “envisions a patch that could deliver drugs to precisely where they’re needed on the skin — like the scalp, in the case of alopecia.”

Profs. Richard Binzel, Julien de Wit and Research Scientist Artem Burdanov speak with Boston Globe reporter Sarah Mesdjian about asteroid 2024 YR4 and their work developing a new method to “find and track far-away asteroids that were previously undetectable by using technology they compared to long-exposure images.” Says Binzel: “With improving technology, we are going to be aware of more and more of these objects.” He adds: “It’s a really important learning process what we’re doing right now. So when we find more and more of them, we know how to quickly process them and assess which of them are really worth looking further into.”

Nature reporter Elizabeth Gibney spotlights QuEra, an MIT spinout that uses atoms and lasers to encode quantum bits or “qubits.” Gibney notes that in the QuEra system, “physicists trap an array of rubidium atoms using laser light and store quantum information in the energy levels of their electrons.”

Steve Mann PhD '97 has been awarded the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award for his contributions toward the development of virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable technology, eXtended Reality products and services, reports Thomas Coughlin for Forbes. “Widely regarded as ‘the father of wearable computing,’” Mann “invented, designed, and built the world’s first smartwatch capable of downloading and running a wide variety of apps for health, well-being, and fitness tracking, ushering in a new era of personal health,” explains Coughlin. 

MIT’s Artfinity Festival kicks off on Saturday, February 15^th with a celebration of the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building and Thomas Tull Concert Hall featuring a free afternoon open house and evening concert, writes A.Z. Madonna for The Boston Globe. “What this building brings to us is support for performance of all different types of music, whether it’s classical or jazz or world music, and then the ability to support various functions with our students,” says Keeril Makan, associate dean of SHASS. 

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with GBH reporter Robert Goulston about the potential impact of tariffs on imported metals and lumber. “When you place a tariff on an imported good, it’s not just the price of the imports that increase, but it’s also the price of the domestically manufactured products that increase,” explains Knittel. “Obviously the cost of importing steel and aluminum will increase, but domestic manufacturers will also raise their price because they can.”