Category: School of Science
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John Joannopoulos receives 2024-2025 Killian Award
John Joannopoulos, an innovator and mentor in the fields of theoretical condensed matter physics and nanophotonics, has been named the recipient of the 2024-2025 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. Joannopoulos is the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics and director of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. He has been a member of the…
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Scientists use generative AI to answer complex questions in physics
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in Artificial Intelligence, Computer modeling, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Computer science and technology, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (eecs), Machine Learning, Mathematics, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Physics, Research, School of Engineering, School of ScienceWhen water freezes, it transitions from a liquid phase to a solid phase, resulting in a drastic change in properties like density and volume. Phase transitions in water are so common most of us probably don’t even think about them, but phase transitions in novel materials or complex physical systems are an important area of…
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Physicists arrange atoms in extremely close proximity
Proximity is key for many quantum phenomena, as interactions between atoms are stronger when the particles are close. In many quantum simulators, scientists arrange atoms as close together as possible to explore exotic states of matter and build new quantum materials. They typically do this by cooling the atoms to a stand-still, then using laser…
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Natural language boosts LLM performance in coding, planning, and robotics
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in Artificial Intelligence, Brain and cognitive sciences, Center for Brains Minds and Machines, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Computer science and technology, Computer vision, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Department of Defense (DoD), Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (eecs), Human-computer interaction, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, National Science Foundation (NSF), Natural language processing, Programming, programming languages, Quest for Intelligence, Research, Robotics, School of Engineering, School of ScienceLarge language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly useful for programming and robotics tasks, but for more complicated reasoning problems, the gap between these systems and humans looms large. Without the ability to learn new concepts like humans do, these systems fail to form good abstractions — essentially, high-level representations of complex concepts that skip less-important…