Imagine a bottle of hazardous chemicals sitting on a laboratory shelf that changes its appearance to alert scientists that its lid is not properly secured, potentially preventing a dangerous spill.

Daniela Rus, Director of MIT CSAIL and the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science, has received the 2026 High-Tech Prize of the Bavarian Minister-President for her contributions to robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems.

In his recent conversation on Building 32, MIT CSAIL Senior Research Scientist David Clark tells a story from 1995 when he got into a conversation with an economist and friend of his. “He said, ‘David, you have to understand the internet is about routing money, and routing packets is a side effect. And you screwed up the money routing protocols.’ And I said, ‘I didn't design any money routing protocols.’ And he said, ‘that's what I said.’” 

Most people think of the waterfront as the edge of the city. A team of MIT researchers sees it as a dynamic, LEGO-like construction site.

Associate Professor Anna Huang delivers the keynote address, “In Search of Human-AI Resonance,” to a capacity crowd.

Srini Devadas, MIT Webster Professor of EECS and CSAIL principal investigator, has earned the 2026 ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award for making key contributions to “secure architectures with broad industrial and academic impact,” according to the ACM and IEEE.

The deployment of automated software systems called AI agents has recently exploded. A November 2025 report by MIT Sloan School of Management and Boston Consulting Group found that 35 percent of surveyed businesses had already deployed AI agents, while another 44 percent planned to implement agentic AI soon. 

Agentic workflows are artificial intelligence-powered software systems that chain together multiple models and external tools to tackle complicated tasks, like analyzing a video and answering questions about it.

At the recent AI and Society Forum at MIT, experts from across the Institute discussed the potential benefits and dangers of technological innovation on labor, the nature of work, civil discourse, election administration, and other topics.

A new chip developed by MIT researchers could help tiny, low-power UAVs avoid obstacles as they zip around tight corners inside an industrial HVAC system to check for gas leaks.