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The irony of artificial intelligence is that it often reveals more about human intelligence than machines themselves.From AI in the home to robots in the workplace, the presence of AI all around us compels us to question its potential and recognize the risks. What has become clear is that the more we advance AI technology and consider machine ability versus human ability, the more we need to mind the gap.Researchers at MIT have been at the forefront of this evolving field. The work presented in this exhibition builds on the pioneering contributions of figures such as Claude Shannon and Seymour Papert, while highlighting contemporary research that spans computer science, mechanical engineering, neuroscience, and the social sciences.As research probes the connections between human and machine intelligence, it also underscores the profound differences. With AI now embedded in everyday life — from smart assistants in our homes to robots in the workplace — we are challenged to ask critical questions about its potential, its risks, and the boundaries between machine ability and human capability.Join us in shining light on the tremendous promise, unforeseen impacts, and everyday misconceptions of AI in this riveting, interactive exhibition.Learn more about the exhibition.

Imagine different worlds in Cosmograph: Speculative Fictions for the New Space Age, an exhibition that brings art and science together to examine possible futures where outer space is both a frontier for human exploration and a new territory for exploitation and development by private enterprise.We are living at the dawn of a New Space Age. What will the future hold? Will space elevators bring humanity's space junk to turn it into useful material here on Earth? Will asteroid mining be the next frontier in prospecting? Will the promise of geo-engineering turn into a nightmare of unintended consequences?Explore these possibilities and more in our new exhibition that blurs the lines between fact and fantasy, and art and science.

MIT is not a place so much as it is a unique collection of exceptional people.What is essential at MIT is asking questions others may not ask, trying the unexpected in pursuit of a greater solution, and embracing distinctive skills and combinations of talents. Whether encompassing global issues, ventures into space, or efforts to improve our daily lives, stories told in this exhibit showcase the process of discovery that sits at the heart of MIT.Delve into the experimental culture and collaborative spirit of the MIT community in this dynamic and interactive exploration of groundbreaking projects and ongoing innovation."MIT’s greatest invention may be itself—an unusual concentration of unusual talent, forever reinventing itself on a mission to make a better world." — President L. Rafael ReifLocated in the Brit J. (1961) and Alex (1949) d'Arbeloff GallerySupported by the Biogen Foundation

How can code be used as a creative tool by artists and designers?This question motivates the work of the Future Sketches group at the MIT Media Lab. Led by artist and educator Zach Lieberman, the group aims to help us “see” code by using it to make artistically controlled, computer-generated visuals.Explore some of the latest research from the group that uses typography and digital tools to create interactive, creative, and immersive work.Located in our Martin J. (1959) and Eleanor C. Gruber Gallery.

Experience the captivating work of Arthur Ganson, where his perceptions of the world are choreographed into the subtle movements and gestures of his artistic machines."These machines are daydreams condensed into physical form, computer programs manifesting in three-dimensional space." - Arthur GansonArthur Ganson's medium is a feeling or idea inspired by the world he perceives around him – from the delicate fluttering of paper to the sheer scale of the universe. Combining engineering genius with whimsical choreography, he creates machines to encode those ideas into the physical world. But he invites everyone to draw their own conclusions on the meaning behind the subtle gestures of the machines.Currently on display are a select group of Arthur Ganson's works from our MIT Museum Collection. We expect to exhibit his work in large numbers in the future.

MIT Collects features objects and other media from the museum's vast collection, arranged in areas that tell stories, explore themes, and dive into subject areas.Modeling Everything:Models and model-making, both the objects and the action, are vital to every research area at MIT and to the life of the Institute itself. Explore a wide array of models for teaching, discovery, research, and documentation, from ships to crystal structures to architectural design.Radical Atoms:Hiroshi Ishii and the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab have pioneered new ways for people to interact with computers, with the invention of the “tangible user interface.” It began with a vision of “Tangible Bits,” where users can manipulate ordinary physical objects to access digital information. It evolved into a bolder vision of “Radical Atoms,” where materials can change form and reconfigure themselves just as pixels can on a screen.This experimental exhibit of three iconic works—SandScape, inFORM, and TRANSFORM—is part of the MIT Museum’s ongoing efforts to collect the physical machines as well as preserve the user experience of, in Ishii’s words, making atoms dance.A Sequence of Actions:Developed and operated at MIT, the Differential Analyzer, Whirlwind Computer, and Apollo Guidance Computer were massive and complex projects that involved thousands of people. See historical components and artifacts from this critical era in programming during the mid-20th century and explore how these early programmers influenced today’s digital culture.Technology and the Dream:Through recordings of students, staff, researchers, and community members, listen to personal reflections and gain a sense of the Black experience at MIT. This dynamic audio installation is co-curated with the MIT Black History Project.Totally Useless Things:Toys, puzzles, and play are a significant part of the creative process. Playful activity can shape a research agenda or an entire discipline. Extracurricular play — like MIT's famous hacks — enhances creativity and community. And play itself is a rich field for scientific research. Jump in and learn how curiosity is the fuel that discovery runs on.Located in the Edward O. Thorp Gallery

How can you investigate something you cannot see?The challenge of understanding the unknown motivates scientists today, just as it has inspired curious people for centuries.Using material from the Allen Forbes Collection, this exhibit traces the scientific process of observing, measuring, and describing that turned whales from monsters into mammals.Using prints from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, Monsters of the Deep examines how European knowledge about the creatures of the sea was informed by new information from sailors, scholars, and beachcombers, and how that knowledge transformed what people understood about the natural world.Want a closer look at what we have on view? You can explore digitized versions of exhibition objects here.On view through January 2026.

Hiroshi Ishii and the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab have pioneered new ways for people to interact with computers, with the invention of the “tangible user interface.”It began with a vision of "Tangible Bits," where users can manipulate ordinary physical objects to access digital information. It evolved into a bolder vision of "Radical Atoms," where materials can change form and reconfigure themselves just as pixels can on a screen. This experimental exhibit of three iconic works — SandScape, inFORM, and TRANSFORM — is part of the MIT Museum's ongoing efforts to collect the physical machines as well as preserve the user experience of, in Ishii's words, making atoms dance.Learn more about the exhibits here, or watch the YouTube video of Hiroshi Ishii's talk at the MIT Museum below.This is an ongoing exhibition in our MIT Collects exhibition.

Janet Echelman's Remembering the Future widens our perspective in time, giving sculptural form to the history of the Earth's climate from the last ice age to the present moment, and then branching out to visualize multiple potential futures.Constructed from colored twines and ropes that are braided, knotted and hand-spliced to create a three-dimensional form, the immersive artwork greets you with its grand scale presiding over the MIT Museum lobby.This large-scale installation by 2022-2024 MIT Distinguished Visiting Artist Janet Echelman, was developed during her residency at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). Architect, engineer and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller collaborated on the development of the piece.The title, Remembering the Future was inspired by the writings commonly attributed to Søren Kierkegaard: "The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have."As the culmination of three years of dedicated research and collaboration, this site-specific installation explores Earth's climate timeline, translating historical records and possible futures into sculptural form.Echelman's climate research for this project was guided by Professor Raffaele Ferrari and the MIT Lorenz Center, creators of En-ROADS simulator which uses current climate data and modeling to visualize the impact of environmental policies and actions on energy systems.Learn more about Janet Echelman and the MIT Museum x CAST Collaboration.Learn more about the exhibition at the MIT Museum.

The Neurotech 2025 symposium presents six talks by neurotechnology pioneers whose cutting-edge innovations are changing the face of neurobiological research from molecules to cognition. There will also be short talks by MIT students and postdocs. The Symposium is open to the public, but seating is limited, and registration is required. Lunch will be provided while supplies last. For more information and to register for this event, visit the Neurotech 2025 website and click "Register Here" to be sent to the Eventbrite registration page.This year’s lineup includesSPEAKERS INCLUDE:ANNA DEVOR BOSTON UNIVERSITYMICHAEL FOX HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL / BWHJEFF W. LICHTMAN HARVARD UNIVERSITYMADELEINE OUDIN TUFTS UNIVERSITYXIAO WANG MIT / BROAD INSTITUTEXIN YU HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL / MGH

Speaker: Vardan Papyan (University of Toronto)Title: Attention Sinks: A ‘Catch, Tag, Release’ Mechanism for EmbeddingsAbstract: Large language models (LLMs) often concentrate their attention on a small set of tokens—referred to as attention sinks. Common examples include the first token, a promptindependent sink, and punctuation tokens, which are prompt-dependent. Although these tokens often lack inherent semantic meaning, their presence is critical for model performance, particularly under model compression and KV-caching. Yet, the function, semantic role, and origin of attention sinks—especially those beyond the first token—remain poorly understood.In this talk, I’ll present a comprehensive investigation revealing that attention sinks catch a sequence of tokens, tag them with a shared perturbation, and release them back into the residual stream, where they are later retrieved based on the tags they carry. Probing experiments show that these tags encode semantically meaningful information, such as the truth of a statement.This mechanism persists in models with query-key normalization—where prompt-dependent, non-BOS sinks have become more common—and DeepSeek-distilled models, where it spans more heads and accounts for greater variance in the embeddings. To support future theoretical work, we introduce a minimal task that is solvable via the catch, tag, release mechanism, and in which the mechanism naturally emerges through training.Biography: Vardan Papyan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, cross-appointed with the Department of Computer Science. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the Department of Statistics at Stanford University, under the guidance of David Donoho, and his PhD at the Department of Computer Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, under the supervision of Michael Elad.

The Mobility Forum with Prof. Jinhua Zhao showcases transportation research and innovation across the globe. The Forum is online and open to the public.

Lourido lab I “Translational control tunes protein expression across the Toxoplasma gondii life cycle”

The convergence of sensors, spatial interfaces, and large visual-language AI models are transforming how we perceive, understand, and act in the physical world. Unlike traditional computing paradigms, embodied systems share our viewpoint and real-time context - enabling seamless spatial interaction. In this talk, I present three themes from our research on the future of Physical AI—where human experience, spatial computing, and intelligent systems converge to augment physical understanding and action.First, I will discuss our work on authoring environments that empower non-programmers to easily create immersive extended-reality applications. I will provide examples from hands-on training, production, and education to show how this works. Our system, which we call agentAR, enables subject-matter experts to author spatial learning experiences using both voice and gesture that help novices create augmented reality (AR) applications at ease and scale. Second, I will highlight our advances in AI design generation that take in human input and generate designs in real time. Our platform, designfromX, integrates vision and language models to convert verbal prompts and sketches into 3D designs, allowing humans and AI to co-create 3D design models. Third, I will present applications of embodied Physical AI in task performance and skill augmentation. Our avaTTar system is an extended reality table tennis-playing coach that fuses immersive visual feedback, and coaching intelligence. Building on avaTTar I will present a table-tennis-playing humanoid, offering a glimpse into the future of embodied AI. I will end by discussing visuo-haptic interfaces and smart physical tools to train workers in hands-on manufacturing settings.Together, these systems point to a future where Physical AI enhances how we design, train, and learn—expanding human potential across engineering, production, sports, and beyond. By bridging immersive interfaces and embodied intelligence, we aim to shape a new class of accessible, real-time, and spatially aware engineering systems.Biography: Karthik Ramani is the Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, with additional appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a courtesy role in the College of Education. He leads the Convergence Design Lab, where his research brings AI into the physical world by blending human-centered AI with spatial intelligence to create immersive, real-time solutions for design, manufacturing, sports training, surgery, and hands-on learning. His work spans augmented spatial interactions, symbiotic human-AI collaboration, computational design thinking and prototyping, and scalable upskilling platforms for production. Using the lens of Physical AI, he develops systems that perceive, understand, and act in real environments—extending human capacity through embodied and intuitive interfaces.He has recently published in top-tier venues across computer vision (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV), human-computer interaction (ACM CHI, UIST), and AI (NIPS, ICLR), in addition to leading engineering design journals. He co-founded VizSeek, the world’s first commercial shape-based search engine for mechanical parts, and ZeroUI, a CES-awarded robotics startup. His educational innovations include Purdue’s Toy Design and Product-Process-Business Model Design courses. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University and Oxford University and a research fellow at PARC (formerly Xerox PARC). He earned his B.Tech from IIT Madras, M.S. from The Ohio State University, and Ph.D. from Stanford—all in Mechanical Engineering. He currently also serves as coach of Purdue’s Table Tennis team, where research meets passion— in the emerging domain of Athletic AI.

Ten minutes for your mind@2:50 every day at 2:50 pm in multiple time zones:Europa@2:50, EET, Athens, Helsinki (UTC+2) (7:50 am EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88298032734Atlantica@2:50, EST, New York, Toronto (UTC-4) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85349851047Pacifica@2:50, PST, Los Angeles, Vancouver (UTC=7) (5:50 pm EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85743543699Almost everything works better again if you unplug it for a bit, including your mind. Stop by and unplug. Get the benefits of mindfulness without the fuss.@2:50 meets at the same time every single day for ten minutes of quiet together.No pre-requisite, no registration needed.Visit the website to view all @2:50 time zones each day.at250.org or at250.mit.edu

*Note: unusual locationSpeaker: Robin Zhang (MIT)Title:Abstract:

Time: 5:00 PMLocation: Cambridge, MA

Bhagavad Gita Fall Lecture SeriesJoin HG Sadananda Dasa, MIT Vaishnava Hindu Chaplain, for a weekly journey into the timeless wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. Explore profound questions about identity, purpose, karma, yoga, love, and selfless service, and discover practical insights for living a meaningful and spiritually grounded life. Each session combines reflection, discussion, and practical tools for self-realization.RSVP: tinyurl.com/mitgita25