The Intelligence Revolution: Coupling AI and the Human Brain.
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Edward Boyden is a Hertz Foundation Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Hertz Foundation Grant for graduate study in the applications of the physical, biological and engineering sciences. A professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, Edward Boyden explains how humanity is only at its infancy in merging with machines. His work is leading him towards the development of a “brain co-processor”, a device that interacts intimately with the brain to upload and download information to and from it, augmenting human capabilities in memory storage, decision making, and cognition. The first step, however, is understanding the brain on a much deeper level. With the support of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, Ed Boyden pursued a PhD in neurosciences from Stanford University.
EDWARD BOYDEN:
Edward Boyden is a professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. He leads the Media Lab’s Synthetic Neurobiology group, which develops tools for analyzing and repairing complex biological systems, such as the brain, and applies them systematically both to reveal ground truth principles of biological function and to repair these systems.
These technologies, often created in interdisciplinary collaborations, include expansion microscopy (which enables complex biological systems to be imaged with nanoscale precision) optogenetic tools (which enable the activation and silencing of neural activity with light,) and optical, nanofabricated, and robotic interfaces (which enable recording and control of neural dynamics).
Boyden has launched an award-winning series of classes at MIT, which teach principles of neuroengineering, starting with the basic principles of how to control and observe neural functions, and culminating with strategies for launching companies in the nascent neurotechnology space. He also co-directs the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, which aims to develop new tools to accelerate neuroscience progress.
A nanoscale silver coating could be the key to making ultra-powerful solid-state batteries finally work.
Replacing the liquid electrolyte inside today’s batteries with a solid one could unlock a new generation of rechargeable lithium metal batteries. In theory, these batteries would be safer, store far more energy, and recharge much faster than the lithium-ion batteries now in widespread use. Scientists and engineers have been chasing this goal for decades, but progress has been slowed by a persistent flaw. Solid, crystal-based electrolytes tend to develop microscopic cracks that gradually spread during repeated charging and use, eventually causing the battery to fail.
A thin silver layer with a big impact.
The phenomenon where electron spins align in a specific direction after passing through chiral materials is a cornerstone for future spin-based electronics. Yet, the precise process behind this effect has remained a mystery—until now.
An international team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST, has directly observed how electron spins behave in real space, providing a fresh understanding of this complex interaction. The findings were published in ACS Nano.
Professors Noejung Park and Seon Namgung from the Department of Physics at UNIST, in collaboration with Professor Binghai Yan from Pennsylvania State University, conducted the study. Their work confirms that chiral materials actively change the spin orientation of electrons, overturning the long-held belief that these materials simply filter spins without affecting their direction.
The idea never died, progress is still being made.
Nanotechnology was once imagined as the next great technological revolution—atom-by-atom manufacturing, machines as small as cells, and materials we can only dream of today. Instead, it stalled. While AI, robotics, and nuclear surged ahead, nanotech faded into the background, reduced to buzzwords and sci-fi aesthetics.
But the idea never died.
We can manipulate matter at the atomic scale. We can design perfect materials. We can build molecular machines. What’s been missing isn’t physics—it’s ambition, investment, and the will to push beyond today’s tools.
In this interview with futurist J. Storrs Hall, we explore what nanotechnology really is, why it drifted off course, and why its future may finally be on the horizon. If AI was a “blue-sky fantasy” until suddenly it wasn’t, what happens when someone decides nanotech deserves the same surge of talent, money, and imagination?
Piezoelectric nanoparticles deployed inside immune cells and stimulated remotely by ultrasound can trigger the body’s disease-fighting response, according to an interdisciplinary team of Boston College researchers.
The paper is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Light-emitting semiconductors are used throughout everyday life in TVs, smartphones, and lighting. However, many technical barriers remain in developing environmentally friendly semiconductor materials.
In particular, nanoscale semiconductors that are tens of thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair (about 100,000 nanometers) are theoretically capable of emitting bright light, yet in practice have suffered from extremely weak emission. KAIST researchers have now developed a new surface-control technology that overcomes this limitation.
A KAIST research team led by Professor Himchan Cho of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has developed a fundamental technology to control, at the atomic level, the surface of indium phosphide (InP) magic-sized clusters (MSCs)—nanoscale semiconductor particles regarded as next-generation eco-friendly semiconductor materials.
How do bacteria adapt to antimicrobial nanomaterials? In this review, Suchánková et al. explain microbial adaptation strategies and offer insights for safer and more effective nano-antimicrobials. FEMSMicrobiolRev.
This review explores induced bacterial adaptation to antimicrobial nanomaterials, summarizing known mechanisms across nanomaterial types and bacterial spec.
Enzymes are the molecular machines that power life; they build and break down molecules, copy DNA, digest food, and drive virtually every chemical reaction in our cells. For decades, scientists have designed drugs to slow down or block enzymes, stopping infections or the growth of cancer by jamming these tiny machines. But what if tackling some diseases requires the opposite approach?
Speeding enzymes up, it turns out, is much harder than stopping them. Tarun Kapoor is the Pels Family Professor in Rockefeller’s Selma and Lawrence Ruben Laboratory of Chemistry and Cell Biology. Recently, he has shifted the focus of this lab to tackle the tricky question of how to make enzymes work faster.
Already, his lab has developed a chemical compound to speed up an enzyme that works too slowly in people with a rare form of neurodegeneration. The same approach could open new treatment possibilities for many other diseases where other enzymes have lost function, including some cancers and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s.
X-ray tomography is a powerful tool that enables scientists and engineers to peer inside of objects in 3D, including computer chips and advanced battery materials, without performing anything invasive. It’s the same basic method behind medical CT scans.
Scientists or technicians capture X-ray images as an object is rotated, and then advanced software mathematically reconstructs the object’s 3D internal structure. But imaging fine details on the nanoscale, like features on a microchip, requires a much higher spatial resolution than a typical medical CT scan—about 10,000 times higher.
The Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (HXN) beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, is able to achieve that kind of resolution with X-rays that are more than a billion times brighter than traditional CT scans.