MIT Media Lab

Another incredible year at @medialab 's #BeyondTheCradle: Envisioning a New Space Age— @mit's flagship event exploring humanity's future beyond Earth. Pictured here with some #astronaut friends by @aurelia_institute's habitat (names in caption) @ExploreSpace_ML @aurelia_labs @MIT

#CHI2026, the premier international conference of human-computer interaction, starts next week, and a number of Media Lab community members are participating. Explore their contributions: media.mit.edu/events/media-l…

In a new paper published in @SciRobotics, researchers from the Tangible Media group and @PolibaOfficial describe a new class of artificial muscle fibers — Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles. The fibers mimic the way that natural muscle fibers bundle, and could enable compact, silent robotic and prosthetic systems. By Ozgun Kilic Afsar, Gabriele Pupillo, Gennaro Vitucci, Wedyan Babatain, Hiroshi Ishii (@ishii_mit), and Vito Cacucciolo news.mit.edu/2026/new-type-…

Developed by a team of researchers that includes Media Lab PhD student Ikra Shuvo, this small, energy-efficient device is capable of extracting water from the air even in arid environments.

At 8:30am ET tomorrow, April 8, join the Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative and our spinoff Aurelia Institute (@aurelia_labs) for the 10th annual Beyond the Cradle! Visit beyond.media.mit.edu tomorrow to find the embedded livestream. Hear from the astronauts, executives, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists who are building the new space age — and tune in at 12:30pm ET for the announcement of the winner of the inaugural Aurelia Prize in Design for Space Urbanism!

Excited to share our work on the myoneural actuator - a 'living' implant that reprograms your body's own muscle into an actuator to restore movement in paralyzed organs. @MIT @medialab @mcgovernmit

From grainy transmissions to HD video from lunar orbit: With MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s laser comms on Artemis II, astronauts won’t just go farther, they’ll stay connected in real time. news.mit.edu/2026/lincoln-l…

I’m proud to be @MIT @MITAeroAstro #Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics. Capturing history, inspiring the next generation of explorers, awesome - we got the moon! @nasa @esa #Artemis II

Save the date 📅 "Raised by AI?" — MIT Media Lab's AHA Symposium — April 28, 2026. For the first time, a generation is growing up with AI in their classrooms, homes, and pockets. How do we ensure they thrive? Streaming live for all → sign up for the link: eepurl.com/jvfw8o

Tangible Co-ideation, an early-stage project from the Tangible Media research group led by @ishii_mit, is a playful, board-game inspired interface for creative collaboration between two people and an AI system. In place of a keyboard and screen, it uses a digital whiteboard and tangible representations of AI mentors — agents trained (with permission!) on the talks and papers of scholars like Professor Ishii (represented by an abacus) and Media Lab alum Xiao Xiao (represented by a piano). The system is designed to encourage reflection, critique, and independent decision-making, as the mentors may disagree about the best approach to a project or question. Designed by: Yuqing Lucy Li, Paul-Peter Arslan, Quincy Kuang, Yuhan Wang, Prof. Xiao Xiao, Prof. Hiroshi Ishii In collaboration with: Xiao Xiao, Director of the Institute for Future Technologies DVHE in Paris Thanks to: Prof. Min Fan, Jolyn He

🌐 AI is now more persuasive than political ads — for controversial sociopolitical questions. So what does that mean for our shared reality? THIS THURSDAY: AHA Seminar Series with Thomas Costello on AI & the future of belief. April 2 | 4–5pm ET | Join us: zoom.us/j/91647096870

Dream Engineering, a field pioneered by Media Lab Professor Pattie Maes (@fluidinterfaces) and alumni Adam Haar Horowitz and Judith Amores, has been named as one of the 25 most powerful ideas of the 21st century (so far) by @sciencefocus. media.mit.edu/articles/the-2…

MIT researchers have developed a “living implant” that uses muscle to restore function to weakened organs—potentially offering an alternative to mechanical devices and transplants. MIT news story👇 mcgovern.mit.edu/2026/03/31/liv…

In @SciRobotics, researchers from the Tangible Media group led by @ishii_mit, together with colleagues from @PolibaOfficial, present Electrofluidic Fiber Muscles: a new class of artificial muscle fibers for robots and wearables. Unlike the rigid servo motors used in most robots, these fiber-shaped muscles are soft and flexible. They combine electrohydrodynamic (EHD) fiber pumps — slender tubes that move liquid using electric fields to generate pressure silently, with no moving parts — with fluid-filled fiber actuators. These artificial muscles could enable more agile untethered robots, as well as wearable assistive systems with compact actuation integrated directly into textiles. By Ozgun Kilic Afsar, Gabriele Pupillo, Gennaro Vitucci, Wedyan Babatain, Hiroshi Ishii, and Vito Cacucciolo media.mit.edu/projects/elect…

How might relying on AI for emotional support affect users — especially young people? Media Lab Prof. @patpat_mit and Dr. Michael Robb (@CommonSense) discuss the issues with @CBSNews. cbsnews.com/texas/video/he…

"Wearability Factors for Skin Interfaces," a 2016 paper by researchers in the Media Lab’s Responsive Environments and @fluidinterfaces groups, won the Lasting Impact Award at the ACM Augmented Humans (AHs) International Conference 2026. media.mit.edu/posts/media-la…

What if AI didn’t just control robots but it could also give humans new physical skills? At the MIT @medialab @hardmodemit hackathon, we explored using #AI + electrical muscle stimulation (#EMS) for AI to temporarily control your body, enabling people to do things they normally can't do, like playing instruments, fixing their car, and making new cocktails. 🍸 🏆 Won the Learn track 🏆

AHA’s HARD MODE Hackathon brings AI into human experience The Media Lab’s Advancing Humans with AI (@AHA_MediaLab) program and the MIT Design Intelligence Lab recently co-hosted HARD MODE (@hardmodemit) — a 48-hour hardware × AI hackathon focused on building the future of intelligent objects. At the Media Lab AI isn’t just about models. It’s about people. That’s the idea behind Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) — a multi-faculty program exploring AI as a human design problem. HARD MODE brought the program to life in 48 hours: 200+ hackers, 40+ projects, one question — what else can AI be? 🦆 Mechanical rubber ducks that debug with you. 🧸 Plushies with personality. ⁉️ AI that questions instead of answers. Congrats to Dreaming Objects, winners of HARD MODE — reimagining AI in the physical world + taking home the $50K prize. Thanks to our sponsors — including Anthropic, Akamai, Qualcomm, Bambu Lab, E14 Fund, Institute of Foundation Models, GigLabs, HRT, Seeed Studio, Tenstorrent, Snap, Viam, BootLoop, Murata, igus, and NVIDIA — our judges, and our incredible volunteers. Video credit: Cyrus Clarke (@cyrusclarke)

For women, by women! Honored to work with the incomparable @cdecoders group led by Prof. @dagdevirencanan. Measuring, monitoring, screening one life at a time.

At 4pm ET on March 19, join @AHA_MediaLab for the next installment of their ongoing seminar series! The speaker will be Sheer Karny, a multidisciplinary researcher studying human-AI interaction in the Media Lab’s Cyborg Psychology group. media.mit.edu/events/aha-sem…