Advancing urban tree monitoring with AI-powered digital twins
The Tree-D Fusion system integrates generative AI and genus-conditioned algorithms to create precise simulation-ready models of 600,000 existing urban trees across North America.
Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS)
Can robots learn from machine dreams?
MIT CSAIL researchers used AI-generated images to train a robot dog in parkour, without real-world data. Their LucidSim system demonstrates generative AI’s potential for creating robotics training data.
Four from MIT named 2025 Rhodes Scholars
Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo will start postgraduate studies at Oxford next fall.
A causal theory for studying the cause-and-effect relationships of genes
By sidestepping the need for costly interventions, a new method could potentially reveal gene regulatory programs, paving the way for targeted treatments.
A portable light system that can digitize everyday objects
A new design tool uses UV and RGB lights to change the color and textures of everyday objects. The system could enable surfaces to display dynamic patterns, such as health data and fashion designs.
Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world
Researchers show that even the best-performing large language models don’t form a true model of the world and its rules, and can thus fail unexpectedly on similar tasks.
Empowering systemic racism research at MIT and beyond
Researchers in the MIT Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism are building an open data repository to advance research on racial inequity in domains like policing, housing, and health care.
Nanoscale transistors could enable more efficient electronics
Researchers are leveraging quantum mechanical properties to overcome the limits of silicon semiconductor technology.
A faster, better way to train general-purpose robots
Inspired by large language models, researchers develop a training technique that pools diverse data to teach robots new skills.
Making it easier to verify an AI model’s responses
By allowing users to clearly see data referenced by a large language model, this tool speeds manual validation to help users spot AI errors.