Our community is standing up for MIT and its mission to serve the nation and the world. And we need you to join us at this critical moment. This story was part of our September/October 2025 issue. It's surprisingly easy to stumble into a relationship with an AI chatbot Rhiannon Williams Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. How these two brothers became go-to experts on America's "mystery drone" invasion Matthew Phelan It's surprisingly easy to stumble into a relationship with an AI chatbot Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Some therapists are using AI during therapy sessions.

The center hosts the world's largest wind tunnel and a rich history of aerospace innovation, preserved in a striking visual archive in the heart of Silicon Valley. At the southern tip of San Francisco Bay, surrounded by the tech giants Google, Apple, and Microsoft, sits the historic NASA Ames Research Center . Its rich history includes a grab bag of fascinating scientific research involving massive wind tunnels, experimental aircraft, supercomputing, astrobiology, and more. Founded in 1939 as a West Coast lab for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA Ames was built to close the US gap with Germany in aeronautics research. Named for NACA founding member Joseph Sweetman Ames, the facility grew from a shack on Moffett Field into a sprawling compound with thousands of employees. A key motivation for the new lab was the need for huge wind tunnels to jump-start America's aeronautical research, which was far behind Germany's.

In a small clinical study, people with above-the-knee amputations said it helped them navigate more easily and felt more like part of their body. A subject with the osseointegrated mechanoneural prosthesis overcomes an obstacle placed in their walking path by volitionally flexing and extending their phantom knee joint. Control signals from their residual knee muscles are used to produce movement of the powered prosthetic knee that mirrors the phantom knee. MIT researchers have developed a new bionic knee that is integrated directly with the user's muscle and bone tissue. It can help people with above-the-knee amputations walk faster, climb stairs, and avoid obstacles more easily than they could with a traditional prosthesis, which is attached to the residual limb by means of a socket and can be uncomfortable. For several years, Hugh Herr, SM '93, co-director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, has been working with his colleagues on techniques that can extract neural information from muscles left behind after an amputation and use that information to help guide a prosthetic limb.

An MIT team used artificial intelligence to design novel antibiotics, two of which showed promise against MRSA and gonorrhea. With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat bacteria: multi-drug-resistant and (MRSA). The team used two approaches. First, they directed generative AI to design molecules based on a chemical fragment their model had predicted would show antimicrobial activity, and second, they let the algorithms generate molecules without constraints. They designed more than 36 million possible compounds this way and computationally screened them for antimicrobial properties. The top candidates they discovered are structurally distinct from any existing antibiotics, and they appear to work by novel mechanisms that disrupt bacterial cell membranes.

A computer vision study reveals changes in pedestrian behavior since 1980. City life is often described as "fast-paced." A study coauthored by MIT scholars suggests that's more true than ever: The average walking speed in three northeastern US cities increased 15% from 1980 to 2010, while the number of people lingering in public spaces declined by 14%. The researchers used machine-learning tools to assess 1980s-era video footage captured in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia by William Whyte, an urbanist and social thinker best known as the author of . They compared the old material with newer videos from the same locations. "Something has changed over the past 40 years," says coauthor Carlo Ratti, director of MIT's Senseable City Lab.

The star pitcher has been studying aerospace engineering at MIT. Now his pitches will take flight in professional baseball. Like almost any MIT student, Mason Estrada wants to take what he learned on campus and apply it to the working world. Unlike any other current MIT student, Estrada's primary workplace is a pitcher's mound. Estrada, the star pitcher for MIT's baseball team, has signed a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who selected him in the seventh round of the Major League Baseball draft on July 14. The right-hander, whose fastball has reached 96 miles per hour, is taking a leave of absence from the Institute and reported to the Dodgers' instructional camp in Arizona.

Advising Center helps students chart a course. Take a stroll along the Infinite Corridor these days and you'll encounter a striking new space, in a prominent location on the first floor of Building 11. With bright blue seating modules, orange accents, and an eye-catching design, it looks like a futuristic space station, sleek and ultramodern--but also welcoming and fun. This is the new home of the Undergraduate Advising Center (UAC). And while the design might be surprising, the creation of the center is no surprise at all. The MIT experience looks different for everyone, and the UAC was launched in 2023 with that in mind, offering individualized support to help undergraduates reach their full potential.

With healthy populations of animals that disperse seeds, tropical forests can absorb up to four times more carbon. Deforestation, hunting, and wildlife trade threaten the hornbill's ability to disperse seeds throughout Asian tropical forests. A lot of attention has been paid to how climate change can reduce biodiversity. Now MIT researchers have shown that the reverse is also true: Loss of biodiversity can jeopardize regrowth of tropical forests, one of Earth's most powerful tools for mitigating climate change. Combining data from thousands of previous studies and using new tools for quantifying interconnected ecological processes, the researchers analyzed numerous tropical sites where deforestation was being followed by natural regrowth, focusing on the role of animals such as birds and monkeys that spread plant seeds by eating them in one place and then defecating someplace else. Evan Fricke, a research scientist in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the lead author of a paper on the work, has studied such animals for 15 years, showing that without their role, trees have lower survival rates and a harder time keeping up with environmental changes.

Yoder recommends printing the pattern on paper in between normal printer paper and cardstock in weight, making sure it folds in straight lines (not too thick), folds back and forth easily on the same line (not too thin), and is crisp enough to make a satisfying snapping noise when you shake it. Her favorite paper isSkytone, which is commonly used to print certificates and fancy envelopes. Once you have your crease pattern on a sheet of paper, cut out the hexagon that contains the pattern. Yoder recommends using a straightedge and blade on a cutting mat instead of scissors, whether that means an X-Acto knife and a ruler on a sheet of cardboard or a quilting ruler and rotary cutter on a fabric cutting mat. The next step is folding the background grid of black lines that the pattern uses as references. Assuming you've cut out your hexagon precisely, you can use the edge of the hexagon and the printed lines to make your creases, or you can fold as if there were no lines printed by folding the hexagon in half (edge to opposite edge) and then folding those edges in to the center to make quarter lines, first in one direction and then in the other two.

The VMware shake up has led to an IT inflection point. Leaders are now weighing whether to renew, migrate, or redesign entirely for the cloud era. In late 2023, a long-trusted virtualization staple became the biggest open question on the enterprise IT roadmap. Amid concerns of VMware licensing changes and steeper support costs, analysts noticed an exodus mentality. Forrester predicted that one in five large VMware customers would begin moving away from the platform in 2024. A subsequent Gartner community poll found that 74% of respondents were rethinking their VMware relationship in light of recent changes.