MIT EECS Department

Every year, the MIT School of Engineering and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing share their advanced degree ceremony, and every year we're struck by the joy, tenderness, and pride shared by the graduates whom we've gotten to know so well, and the family members who've come to cheer their accomplishments. Here are a few of our favorite shots from this year's Advanced Degree Ceremony, held on Wednesday, May 27th. Photo credits: Jake Belcher and Beth Versoy.

Congratulations to Stephen Brade, one of the 2026 MAD Design Fellows! Brade's ongoing research centers on building agentic AI systems that can meaningfully participate in live musical improvisation — responding to, challenging, and complementing human performers in real time.

Introducing the 2026 MAD Design Fellows | News | MAD The ten Design Fellows are MIT graduate students advancing interdisciplinary design spanning AI and musical performance, urban planning and climate resilience, adaptive and resource-efficient construction, robotics and accessibility, climate-responsive architecture, scalable metamaterials, and AI-me...

Connor Coley went from being an MIT graduate student, to a Broad postdoc appointment, to a member of the faculty at EECS and in MIT Chemical Engineering (ChemE). “MIT is a very special place in terms of the resources and the fluidity across departments," he says. "MIT seemed to be doing a really good job supporting the intersection of AI and science, and it was a vibrant ecosystem to stay in."

We're glad you're here, Connor!

Among all of the possible chemical compounds, it’s estimated that between 1020 and 1060 may hold potential as small-molecule drugs.

Evaluating each of those compounds experimentally would be far too time-consuming for chemists. So, in recent years, MIT Associate Professor Connor Coley PhD ’19 has been using artificial intelligence to help identify compounds that could make good drug candidates. https://news.mit.edu/2026/building-ai-models-with-chemical-principles-connor-coley-0520

Distinguished Professor of Computing Armando Solar-Lezama knows exactly why AI can't be a "plug and play" replacement for human workers. "You're... going to be open to all of these different failure modes that the humans didn't have and that suddenly become very significant."

Why You Can’t Just Swap Humans for AI with MIT Professor Armando Solar-Lezama Audrey Woods, MIT CSAIL Alliances | May 19, 2026For MIT Professor Armando Solar-Lezama, one of the most common misunderstandings about AI is the notion that it can be dropped into existing human roles like a plug-and-play replacement.In his dual roles of Associate Director and COO of Massachusetts I...

David Huang ’85, SM ’89, PhD ’93 wasn't thinking about ophthalmology as an electrical engineering student--but the invention he co-created with James Fujimoto ’79, SM ’81, PhD ’84, the Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Eric Swanson SM ’84 has saved thousands from blindness.

Inventor Recalls Eye Imaging Breakthrough Optical coherence tomography—a technology invented by clinician-scientist David Huang ’85, SM ’89, PhD ’93—is used in 40 million procedures per year. Read more.

Associate Professor Jelena Notaros and her team have developed a novel silicon-photonics chip design that could fuel the development of advanced lidar sensors for demanding applications like autonomous vehicle navigation, aerial surveying, and construction site monitoring.

Photonics advance could enable compact, high-performance lidar sensors With a novel design, MIT researchers overcame a stubborn problem that has limited the effectiveness of chip-based systems for lidar.

Course 6-5: Electrical Engineering With Computing, a new major launched last fall by the MIT EECS Department, has been embraced by the MIT student community. It is now the third-most selected major among first-year students.

“The major was thoughtfully designed to offer a strong foundation in core electrical engineering concepts — such as circuits, signals, systems, and architecture — while also providing well-structured specialization tracks that prepare students for the future of the field,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s Provost.

Those tracks include structured paths to explore not only the traditional domains of electrical engineering, but cutting-edge fields such as nanoelectronics, quantum systems engineering, and photonics.

https://news.mit.edu/2026/discovering-joy-future-forward-electrical-engineering-0312

We're kicking off the weekend with this charming video from Marty Klein '62, who remembers his time working with "Doc" Edgerton--and a famous stunt staged by classmate Oliver Smoot.

MIT Mechanical Engineering 2 likes. "Move over Smoot: Measuring Boston’s Longfellow Bridge in “Kleins”"

"Silent" heart attacks are usually chalked up to indigestion or fatigue; but if you've had one heart attack already, your odds of dying from a second are much higher. With support from the the MIT Human Insight Collaborative, Esther Duflo and Marzyeh Ghassemi are using machine learning to help identify patients who may have had silent attacks--and who could benefit from a simple and inexpensive preventative regimen to keep another heart attack at bay.

Economics and AI Join Forces to Expand Reach of Diagnostics A cross-disciplinary project aims to use machine learning to help drive down medical testing costs in developing countries.