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Helping us make our way ‘through a world that can feel broken’
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Helping us make our way ‘through a world that can feel broken’

Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer Arts & Culture Helping us make our way ‘through a world that can feel broken’ Liz Mineo Harvard Staff Writer September 25, 2026 long read Maria Tatar has spent her career tracing evolution of folk, fairy tales, explaining why they still matter Part of the Experience series Scholars at Harvard tell their stories in the Experience series. Maria Tatar’s love for fairy tales and German literature took root in the cluttered attic of a rambling mansion donated to a church in Highland Park, Illinois. Her family was housed there after immigrating from postwar Europe and settling in the US as “displaced persons.” Tatar, one of the world’s foremo...

📅 2026-09-25 17:33:00    •    Harvard Gazette
A new technique could accelerate the development of RNA therapies
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A new technique could accelerate the development of RNA therapies

RNA vaccines and other nucleic acid therapeutics are typically packaged within fatty molecules known as lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). MIT researchers have now come up with a way to produce these particles much more quickly, and with more precise control over their size and shape.This new process, which can be run automatically without any human intervention, could greatly speed up the development of new RNA and DNA therapeutics, the researchers say. “This method can help you determine what are the parameters that will generate specific size and shape attributes, before you take those particles and see which one will perform best,” says Cedric Devos, an MIT postdoc and one of the lead authors o...

📅 2026-09-25 17:25:00    •    MIT News
Two early-career researchers win Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career awards
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Two early-career researchers win Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career awards

Juncal Arbelaiz of PNI and Sarah Cherkaoui of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics have been honored as two of this year's 12 CASI recipients who “bring extraordinary quantitative and technical expertise to biological problems."

📅 2026-09-25 13:00:00    •    Princeton University News
Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute launches to address challenges facing our brain health
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Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute launches to address challenges facing our brain health

Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute launches to address challenges facing our brain health Abby Munson Fri, 09/25/2026 - 10:42 The Cambridge Mind and Brain Institute brings together researchers from across the University to work alongside patients, carers, practitioners, policymakers and innovators to help understand and support individuals experiencing cognitive and emotional difficulties at every stage of life. Our brain health is at increasing risk from everything from digital lifestyles, diet, physical inactivity, acute or chronic illnesses, climate change, conflicts to social cohesion. Yet we don’t fully understand why or how these factors affect our cognitive and emotional well-being, a...

📅 2026-09-25 09:42:24    •    Cambridge News
Scattering neutrinos to probe the fundamental laws of the universe
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Scattering neutrinos to probe the fundamental laws of the universe

Many people who are successful in STEM fields were lucky to have someone who turned them on to a topic and encouraged their interest. For Faith Reyes, that person was her high school physics teacher, Ms. Bolster. Whereas Reyes had earlier studied math and science without seeing how those subjects could be applied outside the classroom, her teacher helped her connect those dots and experience the excitement of investigating the physical world. With Ms. Bolster’s help, Reyes started a physics club where students would gather before school and conduct experiments. “I just sort of fell in love with physics then,” Reyes says. “And luckily, as I began to study it more and more, I found I landed ex...

📅 2026-09-25 04:00:00    •    MIT News
Who’ll win AI race? U.S.? China? Maybe no one.
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Who’ll win AI race? U.S.? China? Maybe no one.

Work & Economy Who’ll win AI race? U.S.? China? Maybe no one. Economist Jason Furman says being first will likely matter only in some areas, but risks of systems going rogue will be shared problem Jacob Sweet Harvard Staff Writer September 24, 2026 7 min read Harvard file photo The U.S. and China are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence as political and business leaders frame the technology’s development as a race between world powers. But Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School and in the Department of Economics, doesn’t think the race has a finish line. In this edited conversation with the Gazette, F...

📅 2026-09-24 18:12:53    •    Harvard Gazette
Biologists identify a cellular pathway that allows colorectal cancer to metastasize
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Biologists identify a cellular pathway that allows colorectal cancer to metastasize

Most colon cancer deaths are caused by the spread of tumor cells beyond the colon, usually to the liver. In a new study, MIT biologists identified a cellular pathway necessary for colorectal cancer metastasis.The pathway they identified, controlled by a protein known as YAP1, is normally involved in tissue repair. When activated in cancer cells, it promotes cell proliferation and migration. The researchers also found that a high-fat diet is more likely to turn on this pathway, through the production of fatty molecules called ceramides.Drugs that block ceramide production could offer a new way to help prevent metastasis in patients diagnosed with colon cancer, the researchers say.“We’ve found...

📅 2026-09-24 18:00:00    •    MIT News
New cell-collection device could improve early cancer detection
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New cell-collection device could improve early cancer detection

One of the main reasons that ovarian cancer is among the deadliest forms of cancer is timing: When doctors catch it early, the five-year survival rate can be north of 90 percent. But when doctors catch it late, in stages 3 or 4, five-year survival is less than half that.About 20 years ago, researchers studying ovarian cancer discovered that many cases of high-grade serous ovarian cancer, the most common type, originate in the fallopian tubes. Detecting the disease there remains challenging, in part because its precursor lesions can be microscopic and difficult to sample.Now researchers in the group of MIT Professor Kripa Varanasi, working with colleagues at MIT and Johns Hopkins University, ...

📅 2026-09-24 15:00:00    •    MIT News
Successful woodland expansion in Scotland’s Cairngorms revealed in aerial maps
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Successful woodland expansion in Scotland’s Cairngorms revealed in aerial maps

Successful woodland expansion in Scotland’s Cairngorms revealed in aerial maps Jacqueline Garget Thu, 09/24/2026 - 05:01 A University of Cambridge-led team has used aerial surveys across a huge swathe of the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland to create detailed 3D maps that show the beginnings of large-scale recovery of native woodland.The maps document a success-story for the Cairngorms Connect nature restoration partnership: young trees are spreading naturally into areas where woodlands have been missing for centuries, following a landscape-scale approach to deer management across the partnership’s 60,000 hectares. From a light aircraft flown 600m above the ground, a laser scanning techn...

📅 2026-09-24 04:01:00    •    Cambridge News
The promise and peril of using visual AI to study cities
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The promise and peril of using visual AI to study cities

A few months ago, researchers from the MIT Senseable City Lab published a study about pollution in New York City featuring some new methods. For instance: With machine learning, they identified the types of vehicles appearing in 331 traffic cameras in the city, and estimated the emissions coming from each automobile. Given enough cameras, these visual artificial intelligence techniques could monitor emissions with an unprecedented combination of precision and scale. For that matter, visual AI today can address all kinds of questions for urban planners. Why exactly is traffic snarling? What are the most dangerous aspects of different intersections? Which parts of plazas or parks attract the m...

📅 2026-09-24 04:00:00    •    MIT News
Cambridge researchers named Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering
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Cambridge researchers named Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering

Cambridge researchers named Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/24/2026 - 02:00 Professor Clemens Kaminski, Professor of Chemical Physics and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology; and Professor Duncan McFarlane, Professor of Industrial Information Engineering in the Institute of Manufacturing, are among 75 leading figures in the field of engineering and technology elected to a Fellowship.This year’s Fellows are making an impact across the engineering and technology sector with innovations in clean energy, AI, medicine and public health. They have influenced academia and business, worked to widen participation in engineering...

📅 2026-09-24 01:00:00    •    Cambridge News
‘Lately, my algorithm is trash’
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‘Lately, my algorithm is trash’

Illustration by Andy Huang/Ikon Images Science & Tech ‘Lately, my algorithm is trash’ Are we shaping our feeds or are they shaping us? Liz Mineo Harvard Staff Writer September 23, 2026 long read Recommendation algorithms promise social media users a personalized experience, but some experts worry they promote doomscrolling, brain rot, and myriad mental health problems. Australia recently proposed legislation to allow users to opt out of algorithms with the goal of protecting children online and giving people more control over what they see on their feeds. We asked faculty members from different fields of study to share their views and concerns about recommendation algorithms. Their responses...

📅 2026-09-23 20:55:44    •    Harvard Gazette