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Regular Graduate Admissions

A regular graduate student is an individual who has been admitted to the Institute and who is registered for a program of advanced study and research leading to any of the post-baccalaureate degrees offered by MIT.

To be admitted as a regular graduate student, an applicant must normally have received a bachelor's degree or its equivalent from a college, university, or technical school of acceptable standing. Applicants are evaluated by the department in which they propose to register on the basis of their prior performance and professional promise. These are evidenced by academic records, letters of evaluation from individuals familiar with the applicant's capabilities, and any other pertinent data furnished by the applicant. While high academic achievement does not guarantee admission, such achievement, or other persuasive evidence of professional promise, is expected.

A student registered in a program of study leading to the simultaneous award of the bachelor's degree and master's degree must apply for graduate study and be registered as a graduate student for at least one academic term (not the summer session) of their program of study.

Some engineering departments require students seeking a doctoral degree to qualify first for a master's degree.

Undergraduate Requirements for Advanced Degrees

In addition to preparation in the specific field of interest, most departments require significant work in mathematics and the physical sciences, but some require as little as a year of college-level work in these disciplines. Requirements of individual departments are described in their chapters of this catalog. Students with minor deficiencies in preparation may be admitted for graduate study; however, deficiencies in prerequisite or general or professional subjects must be made up before the student can proceed with graduate work dependent on them.

Application Procedures

Students normally begin graduate study in September. However, in select departments, suitable programs can be arranged for students entering in June or February. Prospective applicants should check with individual departments about their dates for admission and matriculation. Application deadlines vary by department. Deadlines are noted on the graduate admission application.

All applicants are required to apply online. Each department or program has its own online application with specific instructions. Department websites and application instructions may be found on the MIT Graduate Admissions website.

Inquiries about specific application and testing requirements, deadlines, and notification of decision for admission should be addressed to the appropriate graduate department or program.

International Graduate Admissions

Graduate student applicants who are citizens of countries other than the United States must have received a bachelor's degree or its equivalent from a college, university, or technical institute of acceptable standing. The academic record and all credentials must indicate the ability of the candidate to complete the approved program of graduate study and research. Applicants are evaluated by the academic departments. Admission is granted on a competitive basis. Competence in written and spoken English is expected.

English Language Proficiency Test Requirements

All applicants whose first language is not English, including those currently enrolled in US institutions, must present evidence of their ability to carry on their studies in English.

Qualifying applicants must take the International English Language Testing System (IELTS Academic), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT), or the Cambridge English Test (Advanced or Proficiency test); refer to department information for specific testing requirements, which vary.

Students who have received instruction in English in their primary and secondary schools may be eligible for a waiver of the English proficiency exam requirement. Also, students who have been in residence in the United States, or in another country where English is an official language, for three years or longer and have received a degree from an accredited institution there where English is the primary language of instruction, may be eligible for a waiver of this requirement. In both cases, applicants may send a written request to the department or program to which they are applying, and should be prepared to provide verification of the institution’s language of instruction. If the applicant is admitted, the department or program will keep this information with the student’s records.

Please see Graduate Admissions for more information about considerations for international applicants.

Special Graduate Student Admissions

A special graduate student is one whose intended program of study is essentially graduate in nature but who is not a candidate for an advanced degree. Students holding a bachelor's degree or higher who are not currently enrolled in an MIT degree program and are interested in taking classes as a non-degree student at MIT must apply through MIT's Advanced Study Program . Deadlines for filing applications are May 1 for fall term and December 1 for spring term. The application and additional information may be found on the Advanced Study Program website.

Admission is valid only for one term; a student must seek readmission each term to continue at the Institute. Those applying for special graduate student status for the first time must pay an application fee. To be allowed to continue as a special graduate student, satisfactory academic performance must be maintained. Admission as a special graduate student does not imply any commitment toward an individual's admissibility to regular graduate student status

A student who is neither a United States citizen nor a United States Permanent Resident is considered an International Student. The form I-20 or DS-2019 will not be issued for subject registration of less than 36 units. Most subjects at MIT are either 9 or 12 units each. Detailed information about policies and procedures can be found at the Office of Graduate Education website.

Graduate Student Status for Research Staff Members

In view of their full-time responsibilities on assigned research and their corresponding salary scales, Institute research staff or employees of the Lincoln Laboratory or Draper may not be full-time regular graduate students, but may, under certain conditions, be granted the status of special graduate student. However, a research staff appointee or an employee of the Lincoln Laboratory or Draper who desires to work for an advanced degree must be admitted as a regular graduate student and must complete the residency and other requirements of the degree program to which the individual has been accepted. This individual may not continue to hold a research staff appointment, nor include any work completed while employed as part of the thesis for an advanced degree.

Any research staff appointee and any employee of the Lincoln Laboratory or Draper may, by written permission from the director of the division (or his or her designate), apply for admission as a special graduate student for enrollment in one subject only per term (but not thesis), either as a listener or for academic credit.

Acceptance for such enrollment will be granted if, in the opinion of the instructor, the individual is qualified to undertake the subject and if section size permits. For this type of enrollment, the student will be assigned to an appropriate registration officer and will pay, whether as a student or listener, the fee established at the special student rate.

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Doctoral Degrees

A doctoral degree requires the satisfactory completion of an approved program of advanced study and original research of high quality..

Please note that the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and Doctor of Science (ScD) degrees are awarded interchangeably by all departments in the School of Engineering and the School of Science, except in the fields of biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, medical engineering, and medical physics. This means that, excepting the departments outlined above, the coursework and expectations to earn a Doctor of Philosophy and for a Doctor of Science degree from these schools are generally the same. Doctoral students may choose which degree they wish to complete.

Applicants interested in graduate education should apply to the department or graduate program conducting research in the area of interest. Some departments require a doctoral candidate to take a “minor” program outside of the student’s principal field of study; if you wish to apply to one of these departments, please consider additional fields you may like to pursue.

Below is a list of programs and departments that offer doctoral-level degrees.

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Simultaneously lab and playground, MIT is unlike any other place on Earth.

Walking through the halls of the Institute feels like walking into the future: four-legged robots leaping over obstacles; researchers hunched over microscopes untangling the fundamental properties of graphene; makers building nanosatellites, or wearable electronics, or even a roller coaster.

Here, students hurry to class yammering about quantum computing, CRISPR gene editing, and nuclear fusion — sometimes in the same conversation.

MIT is nerd heaven, a place where that word implies nothing but muscle and credibility. We value merit, rigor, ingenuity, and real-world problem-solving. This is where bright minds come from every corner of the Earth to make something new — and make something of themselves.

In this community, we believe as much in excellence and boldness as we do in humility and the value of failure. An open spirit of collaboration. A strong desire to make a positive impact. And a sense of responsibility to make the world a better place.

We encourage you to visit campus, explore Cambridge and Boston, talk to current students and faculty, and get to know our community in person.

You will find, in the words of one of our students, that “the MIT culture is very accepting.” And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

MIT EECS GAAP

Graduate application assistance program, search form.

The Graduate Application Assistance Program (GAAP) is a student-run initiative offered by PhD students in the MIT EECS department. We pair eligible underrepresented applicants with current student volunteers, who mentor them 1:1 through the graduate application process, meeting periodically with applicants all the way up to the deadline. Since 2020, GAAP mentors have helped ~1,000 applicants through the application process!

GAAP signups for applicants applying to graduate school in Fall 2023 are  now closed . Stay tuned for our 2024-25 cycle!

Concerned that you discovered GAAP too late? Don't worry! We match applicants with mentors weekly up until a few days before the application deadline.

Note: GAAP is a program designed for underrepresented groups, defined as those groups for which representation in the EECS PhD program at MIT is significantly less than representation in the general US population. The signup form will walk you through our eligibility criteria.

For current MIT graduate students

Mentor for gaap.

For just a couple of hours of time commitment, you can make a lasting positive impact on a young researcher's career. It's also a special opportunity to gain valuable mentoring experience, which is an important part of any academic or industry CV. All current MIT EECS graduate students are eligible to mentor. We will provide you with mentoring resources if you need them!  Sign ups are now closed. Stay tuned for our 2024-25 cycle!

Join the GAAP Team

GAAP is run by a team of dedicated student volunteers.  We could always use some help! To join the team, reach out to the GAAP team (see Contact ).

For prospective donors

GAAP is funded by generous donations from organizations and individuals committed to promoting equity in the graduate school admissions process. If you would like to support our program to ensure its long-term continuity, please reach out to the GAAP team (see  Contact ). We would like to thank the MIT/IBM Watson AI Lab, MIT Quest for Intelligence, and MIT EECS Department for their support over the years.

Some more resources for applicants

• The official MIT EECS graduate admissions website
• Helpful information on statements of purpose from the MIT EECS Communication Lab
• Quotes from MIT faculty about what they are looking for in statements of purpose

Meet the GAAP team

GAAP is run by a team of graduate student volunteers at MIT! Alphabetically, the 2023-24 team is:

Alan Chen (tech & comms) Eric Li (trainings) Haoyuan Sun (trainings) Irene Tenison (outreach) Kartik Chandra (lead) Logan Engstrom (tech) Peter Deutsch (finance) Rebecca Lin (trainings) Ticha Sethapakdi (lead & branding)

Recent News

Please note: The admissions office is closed Wednesday, June 12, from 11:30 AM–1:30 PM.

First-year applicants: Deadlines & requirements

The application.

The first-year application is closed in the MIT application portal .

Please note: You’re only allowed to apply once per entry year.

Early Action (EA)

Regular Action (RA)

Supplemental materials

Our admissions process is designed to be completed online. Creative portfolios in SlideRoom are available for researchers, performing artists, visual artists, and makers to submit supplemental materials.

If you must mail materials to MIT, please use this address:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Office of Undergraduate Admissions 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room E38-200 Cambridge, MA 02139

Other dates & deadlines

• All students who are applying for financial aid should submit materials by February 15 (see Financial aid deadlines )
• Early Action applicants will receive an admissions decision in mid-December
• Regular Action students will receive an admissions decision in mid-March
• Admitted students must inform MIT of their enrollment decision by May 1

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Researchers demonstrate the first chip-based 3D printer

By adam zewe.

June 10, 2024 | MIT News

Imagine a portable 3D printer you could hold in the palm of your hand. The tiny device could enable a user to rapidly create customized, low-cost objects on the go, like a fastener to repair a wobbly bicycle wheel or a component for a critical medical operation.

Researchers from MIT and the University of Texas at Austin took a major step toward making this idea a reality by demonstrating the first chip-based 3D printer. Their proof-of-concept device consists of a single, millimeter-scale photonic chip that emits reconfigurable beams of light into a well of resin that cures into a solid shape when light strikes it.

The prototype chip has no moving parts, instead relying on an array of tiny optical antennas to steer a beam of light. The beam projects up into a liquid resin that has been designed to rapidly cure when exposed to the beam’s wavelength of visible light.

By combining silicon photonics and photochemistry, the interdisciplinary research team was able to demonstrate a chip that can steer light beams to 3D print arbitrary two-dimensional patterns, including the letters M-I-T. Shapes can be fully formed in a matter of seconds.

In the long run, they envision a system where a photonic chip sits at the bottom of a well of resin and emits a 3D hologram of visible light, rapidly curing an entire object in a single step.

This type of portable 3D printer could have many applications, such as enabling clinicians to create tailor-made medical device components or allowing engineers to make rapid prototypes at a job site.

“This system is completely rethinking what a 3D printer is. It is no longer a big box sitting on a bench in a lab creating objects, but something that is handheld and portable. It is exciting to think about the new applications that could come out of this and how the field of 3D printing could change,” says senior author Jelena Notaros, the Robert J. Shillman Career Development Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics.

Joining Notaros on the paper are Sabrina Corsetti, lead author and EECS graduate student; Milica Notaros PhD ’23; Tal Sneh, an EECS graduate student; Alex Safford, a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin; and Zak Page, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UT Austin. The  research appears today  in  Nature Light Science and Applications .

Printing with a chip

Experts in silicon photonics, the Notaros group previously developed integrated optical-phased-array systems that steer beams of light using a series of microscale antennas fabricated on a chip using semiconductor manufacturing processes. By speeding up or delaying the optical signal on either side of the antenna array, they can move the beam of emitted light in a certain direction.

Such systems are key for lidar sensors, which map their surroundings by emitting infrared light beams that bounce off nearby objects. Recently, the group has focused on systems that emit and steer visible light for augmented-reality applications.

They wondered if such a device could be used for a chip-based 3D printer.

At about the same time they started brainstorming, the Page Group at UT Austin demonstrated specialized resins that can be rapidly cured using wavelengths of visible light for the first time. This was the missing piece that pushed the chip-based 3D printer into reality.

“With photocurable resins, it is very hard to get them to cure all the way up at infrared wavelengths, which is where integrated optical-phased-array systems were operating in the past for lidar,” Corsetti says. “Here, we are meeting in the middle between standard photochemistry and silicon photonics by using visible-light-curable resins and visible-light-emitting chips to create this chip-based 3D printer. You have this merging of two technologies into a completely new idea.”

Their prototype consists of a single photonic chip containing an array of 160-nanometer-thick optical antennas. (A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.) The entire chip fits onto a U.S. quarter.

When powered by an off-chip laser, the antennas emit a steerable beam of visible light into the well of photocurable resin. The chip sits below a clear slide, like those used in microscopes, which contains a shallow indentation that holds the resin. The researchers use electrical signals to nonmechanically steer the light beam, causing the resin to solidify wherever the beam strikes it.

A collaborative approach

But effectively modulating visible-wavelength light, which involves modifying its amplitude and phase, is especially tricky. One common method requires heating the chip, but this is inefficient and takes a large amount of physical space.

Instead, the researchers used liquid crystal to fashion compact modulators they integrate onto the chip. The material’s unique optical properties enable the modulators to be extremely efficient and only about 20 microns in length.

A single waveguide on the chip holds the light from the off-chip laser. Running along the waveguide are tiny taps which tap off a little bit of light to each of the antennas.

The researchers actively tune the modulators using an electric field, which reorients the liquid crystal molecules in a certain direction. In this way, they can precisely control the amplitude and phase of light being routed to the antennas.

But forming and steering the beam is only half the battle. Interfacing with a novel photocurable resin was a completely different challenge.

The Page Group at UT Austin worked closely with the Notaros Group at MIT, carefully adjusting the chemical combinations and concentrations to zero-in on a formula that provided a long shelf-life and rapid curing.

In the end, the group used their prototype to 3D print arbitrary two-dimensional shapes within seconds.

Building off this prototype, they want to move toward developing a system like the one they originally conceptualized — a chip that emits a hologram of visible light in a resin well to enable volumetric 3D printing in only one step.

“To be able to do that, we need a completely new silicon-photonics chip design. We already laid out a lot of what that final system would look like in this paper. And, now, we are excited to continue working towards this ultimate demonstration,” Jelena Notaros says.

This work was funded, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the MIT Rolf G. Locher Endowed Fellowship, and the MIT Frederick and Barbara Cronin Fellowship.

Related topics

• Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE)

Media Inquiries

Journalists seeking information about EECS, or interviews with EECS faculty members, should email [email protected] .

Please note: The EECS Communications Office only handles media inquiries related to MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. Please visit other school, department, laboratory, or center websites to locate their dedicated media-relations teams.

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JOINT PROGRAM IN OCEANOGRAPHY/APPLIED OCEAN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

• JP Mentoring Program for Applicants (JP ASK)
• Undergraduate Preparation
• How to Apply
• Tips for Contacting Faculty

Applicants to the MIT-WHOI Joint Program come from widely varying backgrounds and throughout the world. Potential applicants are welcome to visit one or both institutions. However, an onsite interview is not required for admission, nor is it necessary to know or have the support of a specific faculty member.

Admission to the Joint Program is highly competitive. In recent years, about 10-20% of applicants have been offered admission to the Joint Program. Most successful applicants have completed an undergraduate degree or equivalent in a basic science or engineering discipline.

Applications are submitted online. See How to Apply for instructions. Doctoral applications are due December 15. A Joint Committee made up of staff members from both institutions evaluates applications, and notification is made to the applicants by mid-March.

The MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering collaborates with the MIT Departments of EAPS, Biology, MechE, EECS, CEE, and Aero/Astro.  If you wish to apply to those departments independently of the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, please also complete their online application form, bearing in mind that they may have different application deadlines.

Students admitted to the MIT-WHOI Joint Program are encouraged to enroll in June and reside at WHOI during their first summer.

Joint Program students, who remain in good academic standing, are provided financial support, consisting of tuition and a stipend during five years of full-time study. This support may come from a Graduate Research Assistantship that is an integral part of a research project, or it may come from a variety of fellowships to which applicants may apply before coming to the Joint Program.

Increasing representation, having a diverse student body, and advancing inclusion are critical to the MIT-WHOI JP’s mission, and to the missions of both MIT and WHOI.

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Modular, scalable hardware architecture for a quantum computer

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Quantum computers hold the promise of being able to quickly solve extremely complex problems that might take the world’s most powerful supercomputer decades to crack.

But achieving that performance involves building a system with millions of interconnected building blocks called qubits. Making and controlling so many qubits in a hardware architecture is an enormous challenge that scientists around the world are striving to meet.

Toward this goal, researchers at MIT and MITRE have demonstrated a scalable, modular hardware platform that integrates thousands of interconnected qubits onto a customized integrated circuit. This “quantum-system-on-chip” (QSoC) architecture enables the researchers to precisely tune and control a dense array of qubits. Multiple chips could be connected using optical networking to create a large-scale quantum communication network.

By tuning qubits across 11 frequency channels, this QSoC architecture allows for a new proposed protocol of “entanglement multiplexing” for large-scale quantum computing.

The team spent years perfecting an intricate process for manufacturing two-dimensional arrays of atom-sized qubit microchiplets and transferring thousands of them onto a carefully prepared complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. This transfer can be performed in a single step.

“We will need a large number of qubits, and great control over them, to really leverage the power of a quantum system and make it useful. We are proposing a brand new architecture and a fabrication technology that can support the scalability requirements of a hardware system for a quantum computer,” says Linsen Li, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and lead author of a paper on this architecture.

Li’s co-authors include Ruonan Han, an associate professor in EECS, leader of the Terahertz Integrated Electronics Group, and member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE); senior author Dirk Englund, professor of EECS, principal investigator of the Quantum Photonics and Artificial Intelligence Group and of RLE; as well as others at MIT, Cornell University, the Delft Institute of Technology, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and the MITRE Corporation. The paper appears today in Nature .

Diamond microchiplets

While there are many types of qubits, the researchers chose to use diamond color centers because of their scalability advantages. They previously used such qubits to produce integrated quantum chips with photonic circuitry.

Qubits made from diamond color centers are “artificial atoms” that carry quantum information. Because diamond color centers are solid-state systems, the qubit manufacturing is compatible with modern semiconductor fabrication processes. They are also compact and have relatively long coherence times, which refers to the amount of time a qubit’s state remains stable, due to the clean environment provided by the diamond material.

In addition, diamond color centers have photonic interfaces which allows them to be remotely entangled, or connected, with other qubits that aren’t adjacent to them.

“The conventional assumption in the field is that the inhomogeneity of the diamond color center is a drawback compared to identical quantum memory like ions and neutral atoms. However, we turn this challenge into an advantage by embracing the diversity of the artificial atoms: Each atom has its own spectral frequency. This allows us to communicate with individual atoms by voltage tuning them into resonance with a laser, much like tuning the dial on a tiny radio,” says Englund.

This is especially difficult because the researchers must achieve this at a large scale to compensate for the qubit inhomogeneity in a large system.

To communicate across qubits, they need to have multiple such “quantum radios” dialed into the same channel. Achieving this condition becomes near-certain when scaling to thousands of qubits. To this end, the researchers surmounted that challenge by integrating a large array of diamond color center qubits onto a CMOS chip which provides the control dials. The chip can be incorporated with built-in digital logic that rapidly and automatically reconfigures the voltages, enabling the qubits to reach full connectivity.

“This compensates for the in-homogenous nature of the system. With the CMOS platform, we can quickly and dynamically tune all the qubit frequencies,” Li explains.

Lock-and-release fabrication

To build this QSoC, the researchers developed a fabrication process to transfer diamond color center “microchiplets” onto a CMOS backplane at a large scale.

They started by fabricating an array of diamond color center microchiplets from a solid block of diamond. They also designed and fabricated nanoscale optical antennas that enable more efficient collection of the photons emitted by these color center qubits in free space.

Then, they designed and mapped out the chip from the semiconductor foundry. Working in the MIT.nano cleanroom, they post-processed a CMOS chip to add microscale sockets that match up with the diamond microchiplet array.

They built an in-house transfer setup in the lab and applied a lock-and-release process to integrate the two layers by locking the diamond microchiplets into the sockets on the CMOS chip. Since the diamond microchiplets are weakly bonded to the diamond surface, when they release the bulk diamond horizontally, the microchiplets stay in the sockets.

“Because we can control the fabrication of both the diamond and the CMOS chip, we can make a complementary pattern. In this way, we can transfer thousands of diamond chiplets into their corresponding sockets all at the same time,” Li says.

The researchers demonstrated a 500-micron by 500-micron area transfer for an array with 1,024 diamond nanoantennas, but they could use larger diamond arrays and a larger CMOS chip to further scale up the system. In fact, they found that with more qubits, tuning the frequencies actually requires less voltage for this architecture.

“In this case, if you have more qubits, our architecture will work even better,” Li says.

The team tested many nanostructures before they determined the ideal microchiplet array for the lock-and-release process. However, making quantum microchiplets is no easy task, and the process took years to perfect.

“We have iterated and developed the recipe to fabricate these diamond nanostructures in MIT cleanroom, but it is a very complicated process. It took 19 steps of nanofabrication to get the diamond quantum microchiplets, and the steps were not straightforward,” he adds.

Alongside their QSoC, the researchers developed an approach to characterize the system and measure its performance on a large scale. To do this, they built a custom cryo-optical metrology setup.

Using this technique, they demonstrated an entire chip with over 4,000 qubits that could be tuned to the same frequency while maintaining their spin and optical properties. They also built a digital twin simulation that connects the experiment with digitized modeling, which helps them understand the root causes of the observed phenomenon and determine how to efficiently implement the architecture.

In the future, the researchers could boost the performance of their system by refining the materials they used to make qubits or developing more precise control processes. They could also apply this architecture to other solid-state quantum systems.

This work was supported by the MITRE Corporation Quantum Moonshot Program, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office, the Center for Quantum Networks, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program.

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Ten with MIT connections win 2024 Hertz Foundation Fellowships

The fellowships provide five years of funding to doctoral students in applied science, engineering, and mathematics who have “the extraordinary creativity and principled leadership necessary to tackle problems others can’t solve.”.

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation  announced that it has awarded fellowships to 10 PhD students with ties to MIT. The prestigious award provides each recipient with five years of doctoral-level research funding (up to a total of $250,000), which allows them the flexibility and autonomy to pursue their own innovative ideas.

Fellows also receive lifelong access to Hertz Foundation programs, such as events, mentoring, and networking. They join the ranks of over 1,300 former Hertz Fellows who are leaders and scholars in a range of fields in science, engineering, and technology. Connections among fellows over the years have sparked collaborations in startups, research, and technology commercialization.

The 10 MIT recipients are among a total of 18 Hertz Foundation Fellows scholars selected this year from across the country. Five of them received their undergraduate degrees at the Institute and will pursue their PhDs at other schools. Two are current MIT graduate students, and four will begin their studies here in the fall.

“For more than 60 years, Hertz Fellows have led scientific and technical innovation in national security, applied biological sciences, materials research, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and more. Their contributions have been essential in advancing U.S. competitiveness,” says Stephen Fantone, chair of the Hertz Foundation board of directors and founder and president of Optikos Corp. “I’m excited to watch our newest Hertz Fellows as they pursue challenging research and continue the strong tradition of applying their work for the greater good.”

This year’s MIT-affiliated awardees are:

Owen Dugan ’24 graduated from MIT in just two-and-a-half years with a degree in physics, and he plans to pursue a PhD in computer science at Stanford University. His research interests lie at the intersection of AI and physics. As an undergraduate, he conducted research in a broad range of areas, including using physics concepts to enhance the speed of large language models and developing machine learning algorithms that automatically discover scientific theories. He was recognized with MIT’s Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award and is a U.S. Presidential Scholar, a Neo Scholar, and a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. Dugan holds multiple patents, co-developed an app to reduce food waste, and co-founded a startup that builds tools to verify the authenticity of digital images.

Kaylie Hausknecht will begin her physics doctorate at MIT in the fall, having completing her undergraduate degree in physics and astrophysics at Harvard University. While there, her undergraduate research focused on developing new machine learning techniques to solve problems in a range of fields, such as fluid dynamics, astrophysics, and condensed matter physics. She received the Hoopes Prize for her senior thesis, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, and won two major writing awards. In addition, she completed five NASA internships. As an intern, she helped identify 301 new exoplanets using archival data from the Kepler Space Telescope. Hausknecht served as the co-president of Harvard’s chapter of Science Club for Girls, which works to encourage girls from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue STEM.

Elijah Lew-Smith majored in physics at Brown University and plans to pursue a doctoral degree in physics at MIT. He is a theoretical physicist with broad intellectual interests in effective field theory (EFT), which is the study of systems with many interacting degrees of freedom. EFT reveals how to extract the relevant, long-distance behavior from complicated microscopic rules. In 2023, he received a national award to work on applying EFT systematically to non-equilibrium and active systems such as fluctuating hydrodynamics or flocking birds. In addition, Lew-Smith received a scholarship from the U.S. State Department to live for a year in Dakar, Senegal, and later studied at ’École Polytechnique in Paris, France.

Rupert Li ’24 earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at MIT in mathematics as well as computer science, data science, and economics, with a minor in business analytics.He was named a 2024 Marshall Scholar and will study abroad for a year at Cambridge University before matriculating at Stanford University for a mathematics doctorate. As an undergraduate, Li authored 12 math research articles, primarily in combinatorics, but also including discrete geometry, probability, and harmonic analysis. He was recognized for his work with a Barry Goldwater Scholarship and an honorable mention for the Morgan Prize, one of the highest undergraduate honors in mathematics.

Amani Maina-Kilaas is a first-year doctoral student at MIT in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, where he studies computational psycholinguistics. In particular, he is interested in using artificial intelligence as a scientific tool to study how the mind works, and using what we know about the mind to develop more cognitively realistic models. Maina-Kilaas earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science and mathematics from Harvey Mudd College. There, he conducted research regarding intention perception and theoretical machine learning, earning the Astronaut Scholarship and Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award.

Zoë Marschner ’23 is a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University working on geometry processing, a subfield of computer graphics focused on how to represent and work with geometric data digitally; in her research, she aims to make these representations capable of enabling fundamentally better algorithms for solving geometric problems across science and engineering. As an undergraduate at MIT, she earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and math and pursued research in geometry processing, including repairing hexahedral meshes and detecting intersections between high-order surfaces. She also interned at Walt Disney Animation Studios, where she worked on collision detection algorithms for simulation. Marschner is a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship and the Goldwater Scholarship.

Zijian (William) Niu will start a doctoral program in computational and systems biology at MIT in the fall. He has a particular interest in developing new methods for imaging proteins and other biomolecules in their native cellular environments and using those data to build computational models for predicting their dynamics and molecular interactions. Niu received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, biophysics, and physics from the University of Pennsylvania. His undergraduate research involved developing novel computational methods for biological image analysis. He was awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for creating a deep-learning algorithm for accurately detecting tiny diffraction-limited spots in fluorescence microscopy images that outperformed existing methods in quantifying spatial transcriptomics data.

James Roney received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University in computer science and statistics, respectively. He is currently working as a machine learning research engineer at D.E. Shaw Research. His past research has focused on interpreting the internal workings of AlphaFold and modeling cancer evolution. Roney plans to pursue a PhD in computational biology at MIT, with a specific interest in developing computational models of protein structure, function, and evolution and using those models to engineer novel proteins for applications in biotechnology.

Anna Sappington ’19 is a student in the Harvard University-MIT MD-PhD Program, currently in the first year of her doctoral program at MIT in electrical engineering and computer science. She is interested in building methods to predict evolutionary events, especially connections among machine learning, biology, and chemistry to develop reinforcement learning models inspired by evolutionary biology. Sappington graduated from MIT with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and molecular biology. As an undergraduate, she was awarded a 2018 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and selected as a Burchard Scholar and an Amgen Scholar. After graduating, she earned a master’s degree in genomic medicine from the University of Cambridge, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, as well as a master’s degree in machine learning from University College London.

Jason Yang ’22  received his bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in computer science from MIT and is currently a doctoral student in genetics at Stanford University. He is interested in understanding the biological processes that underlie human health and disease. At MIT, and subsequently at Massachusetts General Hospital, Yang worked on the mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration in repeat expansion diseases, uncovering a novel molecular consequence of repeat protein aggregation.

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