MIT Media Lab

Congratulations to Jocelyn S., a PhD student in the Media Lab’s Personal Robots research group, on receiving an honorable mention for the 2025 Jane Street Graduate Research Fellowship!

As NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—whose planned one-week mission unexpectedly lasted nine months—returned to Earth, Media Lab Director Dava Newman talked to Newsbreak about the physical effects of a prolonged stay in space. “Just take it slow, take it safe, we have them home,” she says, “and they’re going to have to readapt to 1 G…Gravity is something when you haven’t been in gravity for over 260 days!” https://lnkd.in/g-GcwEUW

The March 2025 cover story for Science Robotics highlights a recent study conducted by researchers in the Media Lab’s Personal Robots group. The research team deployed social robots in the homes of 70 families with young children; over the course of a few months, the robots participated in parent-child reading as either a passive listener or an active robot with different behavior strategies. The team found that during this process the parent-child reading experience improved, with longer conversation times observed when the robot actively participated. These results indicate potential benefits for early childhood development, where parent-child dialogue plays an important role in literacy and comprehension. https://lnkd.in/eEkNCubA Authors: Huili Chen, Ph.D., Kim Yubin, Kejia Patterson, Cynthia Breazeal, and Hae Won Park Photo credit: Jimmy Day

A paper by Media Lab researchers and collaborators, to appear at CHI 2025, describes a new rapid-prototyping platform called VIK (Voxel Invention Kit) that utilizes reconfigurable building blocks with integrated electronics. The system can be assembled into complex, functional devices, with potential applications in areas ranging from space fabrication to the development of smart buildings and intelligent infrastructure for sustainable cities. Co-lead author Jack Forman, a PhD student in the Tangible Media group and an affiliate of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), says, “This is about democratizing access to functional interactive devices. With VIK, there is no 3D printing or laser cutting required. If you just have the voxel faces, you are able to produce these interactive structures anywhere you want.”

Congratulations to the 2025 LEGO Papert Fellows, Lancelot Blanchard, Karishma Chadha, and Hyejun Y.! Mitch Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, says, "Ever since the founding of the Media Lab 40 years ago, Seymour Papert’s ideas about learning and education have had a deep influence at the Media Lab—and around the world. This new group of LEGO Papert Fellows follow in Seymour’s tradition, innovating at the intersection of technology, learning, and play.”

This week, the Boston Lyric Opera presents “The Seasons,” a new Baroque opera about the weather featuring the music of Antonio Vivaldi. Following the performance tonight, March 14, Media Lab research engineer Minoo Rathnasabapathy will join a panel discussion, “Arts + Science: Making the Data Make Sense,” to discuss her work in Climate Intelligence.

Watch: “Gaze to the Stars,” by Media Lab Professor Behnaz Farahi and the Critical Matter research group, is an interactive projection mapping project that transforms MIT’s Great Dome into a storytelling vessel. This vessel holds the hopes, dreams, and desires of 200 participants whose stories are displayed as striking close-ups of each person's eyes, projected across the normally austere surface of the MIT Dome. The participants' words, envisioned as sparkling particles that glitter like stars across their irises, were encoded into video of their eyes; the stories can be decoded in real time on the project’s livestream. See “Gaze to the Stars” on the Great Dome from 7:30pm–1am ET tonight and tomorrow, when it will illuminate the Dome during the lunar eclipse! Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gJXSjZME

The Media Lab is pleased to announce the launch of AHA: Advancing Humans with AI (AHA at MIT Media Lab), a new, multi-faculty research program led by Media Lab Professor Pattie Maes and alum Dr. Pat Pataranutaporn. This program aims to address a critical gap in AI research and development: while tremendous resources are being devoted to improving AI's technical capabilities, far less attention has been paid to understanding how humans respond to these systems and how to design the technologies in ways that maximize positive human outcomes. AHA will create a new research effort around human-AI interaction through three complementary methods of inquiry: * Inspiring potential AI futures and applications through the design and deployment of novel AI experiences designed to benefit people; * Investigating both positive and negative impacts of AI use on human behavior and experience through rigorous studies; * Inventing new models, methods, and interfaces that aim to elevate people's capabilities, agency, and flourishing. On April 10, 2025, tune into the livestream of the inaugural AHA Symposium, where leading researchers and thinkers from industry, academia, and the nonprofit sector will ask the question: "Can We Design AI to Support Human Flourishing?" https://lnkd.in/gAQzpXKG

Tomorrow evening, starting at 6pm, the MIT Museum and Arts at MIT present a special edition of the Museum’s After Dark series! Come and explore a range of artistic exhibits and expressions at the Museum and across campus, as part of the MIT Festival for the Arts, Artfinity. At the MIT Museum, Media Lab Professor Behnaz Farahi will discuss “Gaze to the Stars,” describing how she and her team in the Critical Matter research group are using technology in transformative ways—sparking the imagination, provoking conversation, enhancing perception, augmenting social interaction, and empowering voices that have not been heard. “Gaze to the Stars” will be projected on the Great Dome of MIT during the event, as well. The Museum’s galleries will be open during the After Dark event, allowing visitors to explore work by MIT faculty, including Media Lab Professor Hiroshi Ishii’s Radical Atoms exhibit, which showcases the work of the Tangible Media group, and Future Type, featuring work by Media Lab Professor Zach Lieberman and the Future Sketches group. Numerous Artfinity events will also be taking place across campus on the evening of March 13, including Moving Music, which comprises two performances at the Media Lab: The Boston premiere of “MAICE,” composed by Professor Tod Machover for marimba, electronics, and a new live AI system created by Media Lab grad student Manaswi Mishra; and “Here...NOW,” by Media Lab grad student Ana Schon, which invites audiences to voyage through the Media Lab’s E14 building, exploring the relationship between space and sound. https://lnkd.in/gP7RJYNH

This year, the theme for International Women’s Day was “Accelerate Action”—an urgent call to address systemic barriers against gender equality. At the MIT Media Lab, we’re working to develop practical, accessible solutions to critical disparities in women’s health worldwide, through the WHx Program and WHx Women’s Health Innovation Fund. WHx brings our unique interdisciplinary approach to collaborations across the healthcare, technology, and policy sectors to redefine possibilities in women's health. https://lnkd.in/g-Ghz43V