Updates from campus: Read messages from MIT's leaders regarding recent events on campus, sharing relevant policies, and correcting misinformation.
Lincoln Laboratory was established on July 26, 1951, as a federally funded R&D center managed by MIT for the Department of Defense. Even as the world has evolved over the last 73 years, Lincoln’s mission has remained unchanged: technology in support of national security.
Economics PhD student Aaron Berman studies how to balance economic development with the pressure it puts on natural resources. From scallop fishing in New Bedford to deforestation in the tropics, “our goal is to get some empirical traction on the problem,” he says.
Or Hen investigates how interactions between subatomic particles shape the visible universe. “A lot of physics, in my mind, is taking complex systems with lots of details and abstracting away the details to seek the main principles that drive everything,” he says..
Humans decide which tasks to use general-purpose large language models for, “so we have to take the human in the loop into account,” says Ashesh Rambachan. A new method evaluates a model based on its alignment with a human’s beliefs about its capabilities.
The newly discovered planet TIC 241249530 b has the most highly elliptical orbit of any known planet, scientists report. It appears to be a juvenile planet in the midst of becoming a hot Jupiter, and its orbit is providing some answers to how such large, scorching planets evolve.
Fifty-five years ago, on July 20, 1969, NASA landed the Apollo 11 mission, and the first humans, on the moon. The mission’s computer system, called the Apollo Guidance Computer, was designed by the MIT Instrumentation Lab, now the independent Draper.
In class 2.702 (Systems Engineering and Naval Ship Design), naval officers get hands-on experience in project management skills central to their future careers. The class is part of Course 2N, which educates active duty officers in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard.