"It's like a microscope," says Joseph Ravichandran, the MIT PhD student who led the project. "If you've got a hand magnifying glass, you can see a little bit. But if you had an electron microscope, now we're really talking. That's what Fractal is. The electron microscope of operating systems” (Credit: Gabriel Maragaño).
CSAIL article
To study how chips really work, MIT researchers built their own operating system

When security researchers want to understand what a modern processor is really doing with the kind of detail that determines whether attacks like Spectre and Meltdown are possible, they usually run their experiments on top of an operating system that was never built for the job. They open up macOS or Linux, patch the kernel by hand, and hope the modifications hold. The approach is unstable, hard to reproduce, and on Apple's platforms, slated for deprecation.

Irene Tenison, Lalana Kagal and Anna Murphy of the Decentralized Information Group (DIG) developed a new method that could bring more accurate and efficient AI models to high-stakes applications like health care and finance (Credits:Credit: Adam Glanzman).
CSAIL article
Enabling privacy-preserving AI training on everyday devices

A new method developed by MIT researchers can accelerate a privacy-preserving artificial intelligence training method by about 81 percent. This advance could enable a wider array of resource-constrained edge devices, like sensors and smartwatches, to deploy more accurate AI models while keeping user data secure.

Ray and Maria Stata Center
External articles
AI and the Internet with MIT CSAIL Senior Research Scientist David Clark

David Clark, Senior Research Scientist at MIT CSAIL, helped design the system that connects nearly every computer on earth. As Chief Protocol Architect of the Internet from 1981 to 1989, he was there for the beginnings of the Internet. Calling the wave of AI technology an “echo” of what happened in the 80’s, Dr. Clark is cautioning, “ maybe we need to slow things down and think a bit.”

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MIT Sloan Tech Summit
Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: Building AI at Scale

MIT Sloan TECH Summit 2026 is a student-led conference at MIT, happening with support from CSAIL Alliances.

Alliances members receive 20% off at registration. Log in to your member account or check with your CRC for your discount code.

Learn more, see the full agenda, and register here. 

 

Member DiscountAlliances members are eligible for a discount for this program. Please log in to view discount instructions.
Alliances
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BoltzGen MIT Presentation

BoltzGen, a new open-source tool designed by MIT researchers, officially launched on October 26. It is a new generative model for designing protein and peptides of any modality to bind a wide range of biomolecular targets. The researchers are offering a live, in-person presentation with demos and discussion–register today!

Join the BoltzGen in MIT’s Stata Center, room 32-123, as they share details of the new model BoltzGen and discuss the future of biomolecular design 🧬

External
Ray and Maria Stata Center
CSAIL Forum hosted by Daniela Rus

Please join us for a special fireside CSAIL Forum, featuring Sir Tim Berners-Lee!

 

Speaker: Tim Berners-Lee, CSAIL Professor Emeritus; Co-founder/CTO, Inrupt; author, This is For Everyone: the Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web

Venue: Live stream via Zoom: Registration required

 

Bio:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Co-founder/CTO, Inrupt

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