MIT Picower Professor Li-Huei Tsai, who has led The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory since 2009, will step down from the role of director at the end of the academic year in May. Her decision frees her to focus exclusively on her academic work, including her continued leadership of MIT's Aging Brain Initiative and the Alana Down Syndrome Center. Meanwhile, the search for the Picower Institute's next director has begun. 'During her exceptional 16-year tenure in the role of director, Li-Huei has led substantial growth at the Picower Institute,' says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble professor of astrophysics. 'She has markedly expanded the faculty ' eight of the current 16 labs joined Picower under her directorship ' through successful recruitment of highly talented neuroscientists. She has done this, and more, all while leading one of our most productive and influential labs, working on a quintessentially grand challenge in human health: combating Alzheimer's disease.'...

The film Project Hail Mary ' which opens widely on Friday ' has one of the best opening scenes on the silver screen in recent years. A man wakes up, disoriented and with a fuzzy memory, next to two dead bodies. We find out that he's a scientist-turned-astronaut on a spaceship headed for a star beyond our Solar System, and those dead bodies are his crewmates. He's all alone, and it's now up to him to save life on Earth. The gripping sci-fi plot comes from the mind of Andy Weir, the author of the 2021 book of the same name. Weir has become known for stories like this, in which quick-witted loners have to 'science' the heck out of situations to save the day. He made his career with the 2011 book The Martian, in which protagonist Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon in the film version) survives being stranded on Mars by, among other things, learning to grow potatoes in the red planet's soil. Weir famously steeps his books in science, going so far as to do calculations on orbital mechanics and stellar astrophysics to ensure that the stories are as realistic as they can be while still being fiction. That all-out nerdery has earned him many fans, says Andy Howell, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who advised Weir on the science in Project Hail Mary. 'I've talked to so many scientists who are like, 'this is great'', Howell says, but also engineers, physics students and others....

"To really understand science policy, you have to step outside the lab and see it in action," says Jack Fletcher, an MIT PhD student in nuclear science and engineering and chair of the 15th annual Executive Visit Days (ExVD). Inspired by this mindset, ExVD ' jointly organized by the MIT Science Policy Initiative (SPI) and the MIT Washington Office ' convened a delegation of 21 MIT affiliates, including undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs, in Washington Oct. 27-28. Although the government shutdown prevented the delegation's usual visits to executive agencies, participants met with experts across the federal science and technology policy ecosystem. These discussions built connections in the nation's capital, displayed how evidence interacts with political realities, and demonstrated how scientists, engineers, and business leaders can pursue impactful careers in public service. A recurring theme across meetings was that political realities and institutional constraints, not just evidence and analysis, shape policy outcomes. As Mykyta Kliapets, a PhD student at KU Leuven (Belgium) and a visiting student at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, reflected, 'It was really helpful to hear how rarely straightforward policy environments are ' sometimes, a solution that makes the most sense technically is not always politically feasible.'...

Zongyi Li, a postdoc in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and Tess Smidt '12, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), were both named as AI2050 Early Career Fellows. Seven additional MIT alumni were also honored. AI2050 Early Career Fellows include Brian Hie SM '19, PhD '21; Natasha Mary Jaques PhD '20; Martin Anton Schrimpf PhD '22; Lindsey Raymond SM '19, PhD '24, who will join the MIT faculty in EECS, the Department of Economics, and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing in 2026; and Ellen Dee Zhong PhD '22. AI2050 Senior Fellows include Surya Ganguli '98, MNG '98; and Luke Zettlemoyer SM '03, PhD '09. AI2050 Fellows are announced annually by Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit organization founded in 2024 by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that works to accelerate scientific knowledge and breakthroughs with the most promising, advanced tools to support a thriving planet. The organization prioritizes research in areas poised for impact including AI and advanced computing, astrophysics, biosciences, climate, and space ' as well as supporting researchers in a variety of disciplines through its science systems program....