Stuart H. Orkin '67 shared a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences with Swee Lay Thein for their research transforming sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia from incurable to treatable conditions through gene editing therapy. Their work identified the master switch controlling fetal hemoglobin, leading directly to the development of Casgevy ' the first CRISPR-based medicine approved for any disease. Orkin, a graduate of the MIT Department of Biology, is currently a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Shu-Heng Shao, assistant professor of physics at MIT and a researcher in the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics ' a Leinweber Institute, was recognized with a 2026 New Horizons in Physics Prize. Shao shared the honor with Clay Cordova from the University of Chicago, Thomas Dumitrescu from the University of California at Los Angeles, and Yifan Wang PhD '16 from New York University. The four were recognized for 'discover[ing] and develop[ing] the theory of 'generalized symmetries' in quantum field theory.'...

The Robotics Innovation Center at the Institute of Science Tokyo opened its automated laboratory in April. Later this year, the lab will be made available for use by other researchers at the institute, says Genki Kanda, an automation researcher who works at the robotics centre. He says that the lab's ultimate goal is to create a 'factory-scale' facility with thousands of robots that could be used by local and international scientists by 2040 or 2050. A laboratory with that many robots would be exciting, says Yan Zeng, a materials scientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. 'I will be curious to see how soon they are really going to achieve that goal,' notes Zeng, who hopes that the lab could be used by scientists globally, like other leading scientific facilities such as Europe's particle-physics lab CERN. Researchers in the life sciences have been automating lab work for at least a decade. Some facilities have one-armed robots that can handle samples in experiments, for instance. But two-armed robots can do more complicated and sophisticated tasks, says Zeng....

Among MIT professors, Bengt Holmstrom, Michale Fee, Gareth McKinley '91, Keith Nelson, Fan Wang, and Catherine Wolfram '96 were elected in recognition of their 'distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.' Additional alumni who were elected include Christopher J. Chang PhD '02 (Chemistry); Cynthia J. Ebinger SM '86, PhD '88 (Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences); Andrew Gelman '85, '86 (Mathematics and Physics); Richard L. Greene '60 (Physics); Chuan He PhD '00 (Chemistry); Pardis C. Sabeti '97 (Biology/Life Sciences); Robert J. Shiller SM '68, PhD '72 (Economics); Daniel M. Sigman PhD '97 (EAPS); Eero Simoncelli SM '88, PhD '93 (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science); and Salil P. Vadhan PhD '99 (Mathematics). Membership in the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest honors a scientist can receive in their career. The NAS is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and ' with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine ' provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations....

MIT scientists Sven Dorkenwald and Whitney Henry have been named 2026 Searle Scholars, an award given annually to 15 exceptional early-career researchers in the fields of biomedical sciences and chemistry. Dorkenwald is an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences and an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Henry is the Robert A. Swanson (1969) Career Development Professor of Life Sciences and an intramural faculty member at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Chosen by a scientific advisory board, Searle Scholars are considered among the most creative young researchers pursuing high-risk/high-reward research. The Searle Scholars Program is funded through the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust and administered by Kinship Foundation. Each scholar will each receive $450,000 in flexible funding to support their work over the next three years. Sven Dorkenwald is a computational neuroscientist investigating the organizational principles of neuronal circuits. The synaptic connectivity of neurons, their connectome, is fundamental to how networks of neurons function. Dorkenwald develops computational and collaborative tools to map, analyze, and interpret synapse-resolution connectomes. His work has led to large connectomic reconstructions of the fruit fly brain and parts of mammalian brains. He uses these connectomes to investigate the architecture of neuronal circuits and how their structure supports complex computations....