mit nuclear engineering phd admissions

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GRADUATE : Admissions

Applications for graduate studies in the department are accepted only through the web system . application assistance is available to applicants from underserved communities through the student-run nse gaap program ., changes for the 2021-2022 graduate application cycle, in recognition of the significant disruptions caused by covid-19, nse will not require or consider gre exam scores as part of the upcoming admissions cycle. nse will accept the ielts indicator online exam in order to accommodate students unable to access the toefl and ielts in-person exams., special notice regarding covid-19 disruptions.

Please review MIT Covid-19 statement and how MIT is tackling the COVID-19 pandemic at https://now.mit.edu .

In response to the challenges of teaching, learning, and assessing academic performance during the global COVID-19 pandemic, MIT has adopted the following principle : MIT's admissions committees and offices for graduate and professional schools will take the significant disruptions of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 into account when reviewing students' transcripts and other admissions materials as part of their regular practice of performing individualized, holistic reviews of each applicant.

In particular, as we review applications now and in the future, we will respect decisions regarding the adoption of Pass/No Record (or Credit/No Credit or Pass/Fail) and other grading options during the period of COVID-19 disruptions, whether those decisions were made by institutions or by individual students. We also expect that the individual experiences of applicants will richly inform applications and, as such, they will be considered with the entirety of a student's record.

Ultimately, even in these challenging times, our goal remains to form graduate student cohorts that are collectively excellent and composed of outstanding individuals who will challenge and support one another.

Questions or concerns about this statement should be directed to the Admissions Coordinator, Brandy Baker, [email protected] .

Applications for graduate studies in the Department are accepted only through the web system .

It will guide you through the requirements of the application and help by indicating any aspects of the application that are incomplete.

Please upload your transcript to the online system. Official transcripts are required for students who are admitted to the graduate program. Failing to complete an in-progress degree or uploading a transcript that has been tampered with will result in the admission offer being rescinded.

Your recommenders must submit letters by 15 December. We require that all recommendations be submitted electronically, using the web application system. Go to Letters of Recommendation and then Letter Status to ask for electronic recommendations and to check whether recommendations have arrived. You must e-mail your recommenders the instructions shown in Letter Status . It is your responsibility to ensure that your recommenders do enter their letters. You may not submit more than three letters of recommendation.

If your language of instruction beginning in primary school was not English, you’ll need to take the TOEFL or the IELTS. Self-reported scores are sufficient for our initial application screening. For admitted students, official scores are required as a condition of their offer. MIT only accepts official score reports; a photocopy will not be considered an official test score. You may not use expired scores. The TOEFL/IELTS is required even if you have a prior degree from a US university, or are currently studying in the US.

TOEFL/IELTS waivers will be considered for students meeting all of the following criteria: 1) you have (or will complete) at least 4 years of study at a US educational institution; 2) a letter must be provided from the US University or English language school verifying fluency in English and include all test results used to make this assessment (can include prior TOEFL/IELTS scores or in-house English language exams, as well as any other assessment methods used). The letter/documentation provided by your US university must be sufficient for the English language visa requirement.

You can find more information on the Nuclear Science and Engineering graduate programs at the graduate education page. More information about the applications process can be found at the central website . Applications for the dual degree MBA/MS program are accepted at the LGO website .

Please address questions about Nuclear Science and Engineering and the application process to the Admissions Coordinator, Brandy Baker, [email protected] .

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Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 24-107 ( map ) Cambridge, MA 02139 [email protected]

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NSE at a glance

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Degrees offered

• Nuclear Science & Engineering | Bachelors, Masters, Nuclear Engineer, PhD, ScD
• Engineering | Bachelors
• LGO-NSE Dual MBA-Masters of Science Program
• Computational Nuclear Science & Engineering | Joint PhD

Fall 2023 enrollment = 165

• 136 Graduate students
• 29 Undergraduates

Degrees granted, AY 2022–23 = 38

Graduate student supported = 131.

• 91 RAs. 5 TAs. 10 Internal NSE fellowships
• 13 Competitive external (non-MIT) fellowships
• 12 MIT-awarded fellowships
• 5 self-supported

Faculty + Academic Research Staff = 58

• 20 Tenured & Tenure-track Professors • 3 assistant, 7 associate, 10 full professors • 10 new faculty hired in the last 10 years
• 3 Joint Professor
• 3 Active Emeritus Professors
• 1 Visiting Professor
• 3 Lecturers
• 1 Principal Research Scientist
• 3 Research Scientists
• 23 Post-doctoral Fellows/Associates

Indicators of Quality

• 6 National Academy of Engineering
• 8 National Faculty Early Career Awards
• 13 Graduate students holding nationally competitive fellowships
• 86% of NSE faculty with an award
• 2021 Awards

Instructional & Research Areas

• Advanced reactor design and innovation
• Nuclear fuel cycle and waste management technology
• Plasma physics and fusion
• Materials in extreme environments
• Advanced computation and simulation
• Radiation sources, detection, and control
• Nuclear security
• Nuclear economics, management, and policy
• Quantum engineering

Professional Education

• Reactor Technology Course for Utility Executives
• Nuclear Energy: Facts and Issues
• Nuclear Energy: Science, Systems and Society
• Nuclear Plant Safety Course
• Nuclear Operational Risk Management

Research funding = $ 28.36 million in FY23

Nse-affiliated research centers.

• Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems
• Plasma Science and Fusion Center
• MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (6 MW reactor)
• Industrial Performance Center

Research Laboratories

• Center for Science and Technology with Accelerators and Radiation
• Computational Reactor Physics Group
• Concrete Sustainability Hub
• H.H.Uhlig Corrosion Laboratory
• Laboratory for Advanced Modeling and Simulation
• Laboratory for Electrochemical Interfaces
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• Nuclear Innovation in Fission Technologies
• Quantum Engineering Group
• Quantum Matter Group

Collaborating MIT Academic & Research Units

• Departments of Biological Engineering , Civil and Environmental Engineering , Materials Science and Engineering , Mechanical Engineering , Physics , and Political Science
• Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
• Laboratory for Nuclear Science
• MIT Energy Initiative
• MIT Quest for Intelligence
• Research Laboratory of Electronics
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Major Partnerships

• Advanced Nuclear and Production Experts Group)
• Fluoride-Salt High Temperature Reactor Consortium
• Institute of Nuclear Power Operations
• National Nuclear Security Administration
• US National Labs: INL, ORNL, Sandia, Argonne, LLNL, BNL

November 2023

A new view on nuclear energy

Winning over nuclear skeptics

Building a strong pipeline for the workforce of tomorrow

Rafael Mariano Grossi speaks about nuclear power’s role at a critical moment in history

Powering the future in Mongolia

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Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 24-107 ( map ) Cambridge, MA 02139 [email protected]

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Thriving Stars helps answer the question, “What is a PhD degree and why do you want one?” Check out this story for a number of perspectives from EECS faculty leaders, EECS alumni and current graduate students working on their PhD degree: Thriving Stars tackles the question—what’s a PhD degree all about anyway??

The EECS Department is the largest in the School of Engineering with about 700 graduate students in the doctoral program. [Application is for the doctoral program only — there is no terminal masters degree, but all PhD students earn a masters degree as they work towards PhD.  A Masters of Engineering is only available for qualified MIT EECS undergraduates.] 

The application website (see link below) is available on September 15, 2024, for students who wish to apply for graduate admission in September 2025. The deadline for submitting completed applications is December 15, 2024.

Applicants to the MIT EECS graduate program should apply using the   EECS online admissions site . 

Questions not answered by the  FAQs ? Send inquiries to  [email protected] .

Need more information? Read  this graduate admissions information letter .

For information on our faculty and what they’re currently working on, take a look at our Faculty Interests Guide.

For more information about writing a statement of objectives, see this article from the MIT EECS Communication Lab .

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Regular Graduate Admissions

A regular graduate student is an individual who has been admitted to the Institute and who is registered for a program of advanced study and research leading to any of the post-baccalaureate degrees offered by MIT.

To be admitted as a regular graduate student, an applicant must normally have received a bachelor's degree or its equivalent from a college, university, or technical school of acceptable standing. Applicants are evaluated by the department in which they propose to register on the basis of their prior performance and professional promise. These are evidenced by academic records, letters of evaluation from individuals familiar with the applicant's capabilities, and any other pertinent data furnished by the applicant. While high academic achievement does not guarantee admission, such achievement, or other persuasive evidence of professional promise, is expected.

A student registered in a program of study leading to the simultaneous award of the bachelor's degree and master's degree must apply for graduate study and be registered as a graduate student for at least one academic term (not the summer session) of their program of study.

Some engineering departments require students seeking a doctoral degree to qualify first for a master's degree.

Undergraduate Requirements for Advanced Degrees

In addition to preparation in the specific field of interest, most departments require significant work in mathematics and the physical sciences, but some require as little as a year of college-level work in these disciplines. Requirements of individual departments are described in their chapters of this catalog. Students with minor deficiencies in preparation may be admitted for graduate study; however, deficiencies in prerequisite or general or professional subjects must be made up before the student can proceed with graduate work dependent on them.

Application Procedures

Students normally begin graduate study in September. However, in select departments, suitable programs can be arranged for students entering in June or February. Prospective applicants should check with individual departments about their dates for admission and matriculation. Application deadlines vary by department. Deadlines are noted on the graduate admission application.

All applicants are required to apply online. Each department or program has its own online application with specific instructions. Department websites and application instructions may be found on the MIT Graduate Admissions website.

Inquiries about specific application and testing requirements, deadlines, and notification of decision for admission should be addressed to the appropriate graduate department or program.

International Graduate Admissions

Graduate student applicants who are citizens of countries other than the United States must have received a bachelor's degree or its equivalent from a college, university, or technical institute of acceptable standing. The academic record and all credentials must indicate the ability of the candidate to complete the approved program of graduate study and research. Applicants are evaluated by the academic departments. Admission is granted on a competitive basis. Competence in written and spoken English is expected.

English Language Proficiency Test Requirements

All applicants whose first language is not English, including those currently enrolled in US institutions, must present evidence of their ability to carry on their studies in English.

Qualifying applicants must take the International English Language Testing System (IELTS Academic), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT), or the Cambridge English Test (Advanced or Proficiency test); refer to department information for specific testing requirements, which vary.

Students who have received instruction in English in their primary and secondary schools may be eligible for a waiver of the English proficiency exam requirement. Also, students who have been in residence in the United States, or in another country where English is an official language, for three years or longer and have received a degree from an accredited institution there where English is the primary language of instruction, may be eligible for a waiver of this requirement. In both cases, applicants may send a written request to the department or program to which they are applying, and should be prepared to provide verification of the institution’s language of instruction. If the applicant is admitted, the department or program will keep this information with the student’s records.

Please see Graduate Admissions for more information about considerations for international applicants.

Special Graduate Student Admissions

A special graduate student is one whose intended program of study is essentially graduate in nature but who is not a candidate for an advanced degree. Students holding a bachelor's degree or higher who are not currently enrolled in an MIT degree program and are interested in taking classes as a non-degree student at MIT must apply through MIT's Advanced Study Program . Deadlines for filing applications are May 1 for fall term and December 1 for spring term. The application and additional information may be found on the Advanced Study Program website.

Admission is valid only for one term; a student must seek readmission each term to continue at the Institute. Those applying for special graduate student status for the first time must pay an application fee. To be allowed to continue as a special graduate student, satisfactory academic performance must be maintained. Admission as a special graduate student does not imply any commitment toward an individual's admissibility to regular graduate student status

A student who is neither a United States citizen nor a United States Permanent Resident is considered an International Student. The form I-20 or DS-2019 will not be issued for subject registration of less than 36 units. Most subjects at MIT are either 9 or 12 units each. Detailed information about policies and procedures can be found at the Office of Graduate Education website.

Graduate Student Status for Research Staff Members

In view of their full-time responsibilities on assigned research and their corresponding salary scales, Institute research staff or employees of the Lincoln Laboratory or Draper may not be full-time regular graduate students, but may, under certain conditions, be granted the status of special graduate student. However, a research staff appointee or an employee of the Lincoln Laboratory or Draper who desires to work for an advanced degree must be admitted as a regular graduate student and must complete the residency and other requirements of the degree program to which the individual has been accepted. This individual may not continue to hold a research staff appointment, nor include any work completed while employed as part of the thesis for an advanced degree.

Any research staff appointee and any employee of the Lincoln Laboratory or Draper may, by written permission from the director of the division (or his or her designate), apply for admission as a special graduate student for enrollment in one subject only per term (but not thesis), either as a listener or for academic credit.

Acceptance for such enrollment will be granted if, in the opinion of the instructor, the individual is qualified to undertake the subject and if section size permits. For this type of enrollment, the student will be assigned to an appropriate registration officer and will pay, whether as a student or listener, the fee established at the special student rate.

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Students Profiles

A Path to Naval Nuclear Engineering

Nuclear science and engineering senior Sean Lowder is taking his expertise to Washington and the U.S. Navy.

Midway through this year, MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) senior Sean Lowder traveled to Washington, to interview for a job. He had three technical interviews scheduled, plus a meeting with the admiral in charge of nuclear engineering for the U.S. Navy. They’d told him that his entire transcript was fair game for questioning, so Lowder had hit the books to prepare.

“I had to review everything I’d studied,” Lowder recalls. “When I looked back on classes that I thought I hadn’t enjoyed, it turned out I’d actually learned a lot and it was interesting stuff.”

Among those classes was one about nuclear reactor physics and the study of how neutrons can interact with materials in a reactor and change the reactor’s energy output. “It was one of the most challenging courses, but also one of the most interesting,” Lowder says.

He got the job he was gunning for. After graduation he’ll relocate to D.C. and join the engineering team responsible for the designs of nuclear reactors used to power the U.S. Navy’s fleet of submarines and aircraft carriers.

“Being part of the team that is responsible for the safety of all those subs and ships is such a cool responsibility to have,” he says.

Just a few years ago, before he came to MIT, Lowder didn’t know much about engineering. But an influential teacher at his high school, Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts, got him interested in science and technology. That same teacher encouraged him to apply to MIT and to also consider the military academies.

“I was pretty lucky growing up to have some really good opportunities, and thought joining the service was a great way of giving back,” Lowder says.

He ended up combining the two by accepting a Navy Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship to MIT. He chose nuclear science and engineering as a major in part because he thought the field would be important going forward into the future, particularly for the Navy, which uses nuclear power for propulsion and energy. But he also knew it was a discipline that wasn’t taught everywhere.

“I thought MIT would be a better place than anywhere else to study nuclear science,” he says.

In addition to his studies and ROTC, which involves early morning training and leadership meetings, he also participated in nuclear science research as part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). His first position, as a sophomore, was in the lab of NSE associate head Professor Jacopo Buongiorno. The research involved understanding more about the properties of CRUD, the corrosive particles that appear on fuel rods in a nuclear reactor. The team synthesized CRUD and studied how it conducts heat to learn more about how it might affect reactor efficiency.

“Professor Buongiorno pushed us to do our best every single day,” Lowder says. “The research was fun and also painful at times.”

As a junior, he joined the lab of NSE Assistant Professor Michael Short, who is working on understanding how materials change when exposed to radiation. For instance, when neutrons bombard materials, they displace atoms. In metals, which are made of atoms arranged in a tight, orderly crystalline array, displaced atoms create holes. Over time, depending on the metal, those holes might grow bigger, weakening the metal. But radiation also adds heat, which also rearranges the structure and can fill the holes back in.

When Lowder joined the team, he had to learn on his own about the materials he was working on. “I didn’t know about damage pathways and the types of defects that can form,” he says.

Now he is working on building simulations of material damage. The team’s short-term goal is to compare simulated damage to actual damage seen in controlled experiments as a way to predict the types of damage that could occur. Ultimately, the work could help engineers predict when components of a nuclear reactor might fail.

“We don’t understand how radiation affects corrosion as well as we could,” Lowder says. “By doing this research, we hope we can predict problems at a reactor level.”

The other highlights of Lowder’s MIT career were the summer weeks he spent on Navy submarines. “Coming from a technical background, I took in every little thing and kept thinking about the engineering and design,” he says.

Lowder is currently wrapping up his work in the Short Lab so that he can write his thesis. ROTC has him up early, schoolwork keeps him up late, and club hockey helps him de-stress. He’s spread thin, but Lowder looks at all of his commitments as a source of strength.

“I have a really good support network because of these groups. They’re there for me and help me out when I need it,” he says. “Everyone is teaching one another all the time.”

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Doctoral Programs in Computational Science and Engineering

Application & admission information.

The Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE) offers two doctoral programs in computational science and engineering (CSE) – one leading to a standalone PhD degree in CSE offered entirely by CCSE (CSE PhD) and the other leading to an interdisciplinary PhD degree offered jointly with participating departments in the School of Engineering and the School of Science (Dept-CSE PhD).

While both programs enable students to specialize at the doctoral level in a computation-related field via focused coursework and a thesis, they differ in essential ways. The standalone CSE PhD program is intended for students who plan to pursue research in cross-cutting methodological aspects of computational science. The resulting doctoral degree in Computational Science and Engineering is awarded by CCSE via the the Schwarzman College of Computing. In contrast, the interdisciplinary Dept-CSE PhD program is intended for students who are interested in computation in the context of a specific engineering or science discipline. For this reason, this degree is offered jointly with participating departments across the Institute; the interdisciplinary degree is awarded in a specially crafted thesis field that recognizes the student’s specialization in computation within the chosen engineering or science discipline.

Applicants to the standalone CSE PhD program are expected to have an undergraduate degree in CSE, applied mathematics, or another field that prepares them for an advanced degree in CSE. Applicants to the Dept-CSE PhD program should have an undergraduate degree in a related core disciplinary area as well as a strong foundation in applied mathematics, physics, or related fields. When completing the MIT CSE graduate application , students are expected to declare which of the two programs they are interested in. Admissions decisions will take into account these declared interests, along with each applicant’s academic background, preparation, and fit to the program they have selected.  All applicants are asked to specify MIT CCSE-affiliated faculty that best match their research interests; applicants to the Dept-CSE PhD program also select the home department(s) that best match. At the discretion of the admissions committee, Dept-CSE PhD applications might also be shared with a home department beyond those designated in the application. CSE PhD admissions decisions are at the sole discretion of CCSE; Dept-CSE PhD admission decisions are conducted jointly between CCSE and the home departments.

Please note: These are both doctoral programs in Computational Science and Engineering; applicants interested in Computer Science must apply to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science .

Important Dates

September 15: Application Opens December 1: Deadline to apply for admission* December – March: Application review period January – March: Decisions released on rolling basis

*All supplemental materials (e.g., transcripts, test scores, letters of recommendation) must also be received by December 1. Application review begins on that date, and incomplete applications may not be reviewed. Please be sure that your recommenders are aware of this hard deadline, as we do not make exceptions. We also do not allow students to upload/submit material beyond what is required, such as degree certificates, extra recommendations, publications, etc.

A complete electronic CSE application includes the following:

• Three letters of recommendation ;
• Students admitted to the program will be required to supply official transcripts. Discrepancies between unofficial and official transcripts may result in the revocation of the admission offer.
• Statement of objectives (limited to approximately one page) and responses to department-specific prompts for Dept-CSE PhD applicants;
• Official GRE General Test score report , sent to MIT by ETS via institute code 3514 GRE REQUIREMENT WAIVED FOR FALL 2024 ;
• Official IELTS score report sent to MIT by IELTS†  (international applicants from non-English speaking countries only; see below for more information)
• Resume or CV , uploaded in PDF format;
• MIT graduate application fee of $75‡.

‡Application Fee

The MIT graduate application fee of $75.00 is a mandatory requirement set by the Institute payable by credit card. Please visit the MIT Graduate Admission Application Fee Waiver page for information about fee waiver eligibility and instructions.

Please note: CCSE cannot issue fee waivers; email requests for fee waivers sent to [email protected] will not be considered.

Admissions Contact Information

Email: [email protected]

► Current MIT CSE SM Students: Please see the page for Current MIT Graduate Students .

GRE Requirement

GRE REQUIREMENT WAIVED FOR FALL 2024 All applicants are required to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Aptitude Test. The MIT code for submitting GRE score reports is 3514 (you do not need to list a department code). GRE scores must current; ETS considers scores valid for five years after the testing year in which you tested.

†English Language Proficiency Requirement

The CSE PhD program requires international applicants from non-English speaking countries to take the academic  version of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).  The IELTS exam measures one’s ability to communicate in English in four major skill areas: listening, reading, writing, and speaking.  A minimum IELTS score of 7 is required for admission.  For more information about the IELTS, and to find out where and how to take the exam, please visit the IELTS web site .

While we will also accept the TOEFL iBT (Test of English as a Foreign Language), we strongly prefer the IELTS. The minimum TOEFL iBT score is 100.

This requirement is waived for those who can demonstrate that one or more of the following are true:

• English is/was the language of instruction in your four-year undergraduate program,
• English is the language of your employer/workplace for at least the last four years,
• English was your language of instruction in both primary and secondary schools.

Degree Requirements for Admission

To be admitted as a regular graduate student, an applicant must have earned a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent from a college, university, or technical school of acceptable standing. Students in their final year of undergraduate study may be admitted on the condition that their bachelor’s degree is awarded before they enroll at MIT.

Applicants without an SM degree may apply to the CSE PhD program, however, the Departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Mechanical Engineering nominally require the completion of an SM degree before a student is considered a doctoral candidate. As a result, applicants to those departments holding only a bachelor’s degree are asked in the application to indicate whether they prefer to complete the CSE SM program or an SM through the home department.

Nondiscrimination Policy

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is committed to the principle of equal opportunity in education and employment.  To read MIT’s most up-to-date nondiscrimination policy, please visit the Reference Publication Office’s nondiscrimination statement page .

Additional Information

For more details, as well as answers to most commonly asked questions regarding the admissions process to individual participating Dept-CSE PhD departments including details on financial support, applicants are referred to the website of the participating department of interest.

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Two from MIT awarded 2024 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

Fellowship funds graduate studies for outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants..

MIT graduate student Riyam Al Msari and alumna Francisca Vasconcelos ’20 are among the 30 recipients of this year’s Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. In addition, two Soros winners will begin PhD studies at MIT in the fall: Zijian (William) Niu in computational and systems biology and Russel Ly in economics.

The P.D. Soros Fellowships for New Americans program recognizes the potential of immigrants to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, and academia by providing $90,000 in graduate school financial support over two years.

Riyam Al Msari

Riyam Al Msari, born in Baghdad, Iraq, faced a turbulent childhood shaped by the 2003 war. At age 8, her life took a traumatic turn when her home was bombed in 2006, leading to her family’s displacement to Iraqi Kurdistan. Despite experiencing educational and ethnic discriminatory challenges, Al Msari remained undeterred, wholeheartedly embracing her education.

Soon after her father immigrated to the United States to seek political asylum in 2016, Al Msari’s mother was diagnosed with head and neck cancer, leaving Al Msari, at just 18, as her mother’s primary caregiver. Despite her mother’s survival, Al Msari witnessed the limitations and collateral damage caused by standardized cancer therapies, which left her mother in a compromised state. This realization invigorated her determination to pioneer translational cancer-targeted therapies.

In 2018, when Al Msari was 20, she came to the United States and reunited with her father and the rest of her family, who arrived later with significant help from then-senator Kamala Harris’s office. Despite her Iraqi university credits not transferring, Al Msari persevered and continued her education at Houston Community College as a Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) scholar, and then graduated magna cum laude as a Regents Scholar from the University of California at San Diego’s bioengineering program, where she focused on lymphatic-preserving neoadjuvant immunotherapies for head and neck cancers.

As a PhD student in the MIT Department of Biological Engineering, Al Masri conducts research in the Irvine and Wittrup labs to employ engineering strategies for localized immune targeting of cancers. She aspires to establish a startup that bridges preclinical and clinical oncology research, specializing in the development of innovative protein and biomaterial-based translational cancer immunotherapies.

Francisca Vasconcelos ’20

In the early 1990s, Francisca Vasconcelos’s parents emigrated from Portugal to the United States in pursuit of world-class scientific research opportunities. Vasconcelos was born in Boston while her parents were PhD students at MIT and Harvard University. When she was 5, her family relocated to San Diego, when her parents began working at the University of California at San Diego.

Vasconcelos graduated from MIT in 2020 with a BS in electrical engineering, computer science, and physics. As an undergraduate, she performed substantial research involving machine learning and data analysis for quantum computers in the MIT Engineering Quantum Systems Group , under the guidance of Professor William Oliver . Drawing upon her teaching and research experience at MIT, Vasconcelos became the founding academic director of The Coding School nonprofit’s Qubit x Qubit initiative, where she taught thousands of students from different backgrounds about the fundamentals of quantum computation.

In 2020, Vasconcelos was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where she pursued an MSc in statistical sciences and an MSt in philosophy of physics. At Oxford, she performed substantial research on uncertainty quantification of machine learning models for medical imaging in the OxCSML group. She also played for Oxford’s Women’s Blues Football team. 

Now a computer science PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, Vasconcelos is a member of both the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab and CS Theory Group. Her research interests lie at the intersection of quantum computation and machine learning. She is especially interested in developing efficient classical algorithms to learn about quantum systems, as well as quantum algorithms to improve simulations of quantum processes. In doing so, she hopes to find meaningful ways in which quantum computers can outperform classical computers.

The P.D. Soros Fellowship attracts more than 1,800 applicants annually. MIT students interested in applying may contact Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development.

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Degree programs

Mit offers a wide range of degrees and programs..

All graduate students, whether or not they are participating in an interdepartmental program, must have a primary affiliation with and be registered in a single department. Every applicant accepted by MIT is admitted through one of the graduate departments. MIT has a number of established interdepartmental programs, and there are many more opportunities for students to arrange interdepartmental programs with interested faculty members.

All MIT graduate degree programs have residency requirements, which reflect academic terms (excluding summer). Some degrees also require completion of an acceptable thesis prepared in residence at MIT, unless special permission is granted for part of the thesis work to be accomplished elsewhere. Other degrees require a pro-seminar or capstone experience.

Applicants interested in graduate education should apply to the department or graduate program conducting research in the area of interest. Below is an alphabetical list of all the available departments and programs that offer a graduate-level degree.

Interested in reading first-hand accounts of MIT graduate students from a variety of programs? Visit the Grad Blog . Prospective students who want to talk with a current student can reach out to their department(s) of interest for connections or, if they are interested in the MIT experience for diverse communities, can reach out to a GradDiversity Ambassador .

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Aaron Huxford given NEUP Award of Excellence

Huxford was awarded through the NEUP Innovations in Nuclear Energy Research & Development Student Competition.

Sara Norman

Aaron Huxford, who recently finished his doctoral studies at NERS, has been honored with an Award of Excellence through the NEUP Innovations in Nuclear Energy Research & Development Student Competition. He was recognized for the paper “ A hybrid domain overlapping method for coupling System Thermal Hydraulics and CFD codes ,” which was published in Annals of Nuclear Energy in September of 2023.

Originally from Green Bay, Wisconsin, Huxford holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and recently completed his dual Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and Scientific Computing here at the University of Michigan.

During his time at NERS, Huxford was a Graduate Teaching Assistant for Professor Manera’s NERS 547 course, where he shared his expertise in Computational Fluid Dynamics for Industrial Applications. Additionally, he played an integral role in organizing and hosting the department’s prospective graduate student visit weekends. He researched in Manera’s Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow Laboratory.

Throughout his doctoral studies, Huxford focused on advancing the safety analysis of current and next-generation nuclear reactor systems. His research primarily revolved around coupling System Thermal Hydraulics and Computational Fluid Dynamics codes, a pioneering method that holds immense potential for enhancing reactor safety protocols. 

With his PhD successfully defended, Huxford is poised to embark on the next chapter of his career. He will continue his journey as part of the Safety Analysis team at Kairos Power, contributing to the advancement of nuclear energy technologies and safety standards.

Huxford expresses his heartfelt gratitude to Professor Kiedrowski for his invaluable guidance and support during the culmination of his doctoral journey.

“I want to thank Professor Kiedrowski for the additional help and guidance he provided during the last couple years of my PhD,” said Huxford.

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MIT scientists tune the entanglement structure in an array of qubits

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Entanglement is a form of correlation between quantum objects, such as particles at the atomic scale. This uniquely quantum phenomenon cannot be explained by the laws of classical physics, yet it is one of the properties that explains the macroscopic behavior of quantum systems.

Because entanglement is central to the way quantum systems work, understanding it better could give scientists a deeper sense of how information is stored and processed efficiently in such systems.

Qubits, or quantum bits, are the building blocks of a quantum computer. However, it is extremely difficult to make specific entangled states in many-qubit systems, let alone investigate them. There are also a variety of entangled states, and telling them apart can be challenging.

Now, MIT researchers have demonstrated a technique to efficiently generate entanglement among an array of superconducting qubits that exhibit a specific type of behavior.

Over the past years, the researchers at the Engineering Quantum Systems ( EQuS ) group have developed techniques using microwave technology to precisely control a quantum processor composed of superconducting circuits. In addition to these control techniques, the methods introduced in this work enable the processor to efficiently generate highly entangled states and shift those states from one type of entanglement to another — including between types that are more likely to support quantum speed-up and those that are not.

“Here, we are demonstrating that we can utilize the emerging quantum processors as a tool to further our understanding of physics. While everything we did in this experiment was on a scale which can still be simulated on a classical computer, we have a good roadmap for scaling this technology and methodology beyond the reach of classical computing,” says Amir H. Karamlou ’18, MEng ’18, PhD ’23, the lead author of the paper.

The senior author is William D. Oliver, the Henry Ellis Warren professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of physics, director of the Center for Quantum Engineering, leader of the EQuS group, and associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. Karamlou and Oliver are joined by Research Scientist Jeff Grover, postdoc Ilan Rosen, and others in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and of Physics at MIT, at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and at Wellesley College and the University of Maryland. The research appears today in Nature .

Assessing entanglement

In a large quantum system comprising many interconnected qubits, one can think about entanglement as the amount of quantum information shared between a given subsystem of qubits and the rest of the larger system.

The entanglement within a quantum system can be categorized as area-law or volume-law, based on how this shared information scales with the geometry of subsystems. In volume-law entanglement, the amount of entanglement between a subsystem of qubits and the rest of the system grows proportionally with the total size of the subsystem.

On the other hand, area-law entanglement depends on how many shared connections exist between a subsystem of qubits and the larger system. As the subsystem expands, the amount of entanglement only grows along the boundary between the subsystem and the larger system.

In theory, the formation of volume-law entanglement is related to what makes quantum computing so powerful.

“While have not yet fully abstracted the role that entanglement plays in quantum algorithms, we do know that generating volume-law entanglement is a key ingredient to realizing a quantum advantage,” says Oliver.

However, volume-law entanglement is also more complex than area-law entanglement and practically prohibitive at scale to simulate using a classical computer.

“As you increase the complexity of your quantum system, it becomes increasingly difficult to simulate it with conventional computers. If I am trying to fully keep track of a system with 80 qubits, for instance, then I would need to store more information than what we have stored throughout the history of humanity,” Karamlou says.

The researchers created a quantum processor and control protocol that enable them to efficiently generate and probe both types of entanglement.

Their processor comprises superconducting circuits, which are used to engineer artificial atoms. The artificial atoms are utilized as qubits, which can be controlled and read out with high accuracy using microwave signals.

The device used for this experiment contained 16 qubits, arranged in a two-dimensional grid. The researchers carefully tuned the processor so all 16 qubits have the same transition frequency. Then, they applied an additional microwave drive to all of the qubits simultaneously.

If this microwave drive has the same frequency as the qubits, it generates quantum states that exhibit volume-law entanglement. However, as the microwave frequency increases or decreases, the qubits exhibit less volume-law entanglement, eventually crossing over to entangled states that increasingly follow an area-law scaling.

Careful control

“Our experiment is a tour de force of the capabilities of superconducting quantum processors. In one experiment, we operated the processor both as an analog simulation device, enabling us to efficiently prepare states with different entanglement structures, and as a digital computing device, needed to measure the ensuing entanglement scaling,” says Rosen.

To enable that control, the team put years of work into carefully building up the infrastructure around the quantum processor.

By demonstrating the crossover from volume-law to area-law entanglement, the researchers experimentally confirmed what theoretical studies had predicted. More importantly, this method can be used to determine whether the entanglement in a generic quantum processor is area-law or volume-law.

“The MIT experiment underscores the distinction between area-law and volume-law entanglement in two-dimensional quantum simulations using superconducting qubits. This beautifully complements our work on entanglement Hamiltonian tomography with trapped ions in a parallel publication published in Nature in 2023,” says Peter Zoller, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Innsbruck, who was not involved with this work.

“Quantifying entanglement in large quantum systems is a challenging task for classical computers but a good example of where quantum simulation could help,” says Pedram Roushan of Google, who also was not involved in the study. “Using a 2D array of superconducting qubits, Karamlou and colleagues were able to measure entanglement entropy of various subsystems of various sizes. They measure the volume-law and area-law contributions to entropy, revealing crossover behavior as the system’s quantum state energy is tuned. It powerfully demonstrates the unique insights quantum simulators can offer.”

In the future, scientists could utilize this technique to study the thermodynamic behavior of complex quantum systems, which is too complex to be studied using current analytical methods and practically prohibitive to simulate on even the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

“The experiments we did in this work can be used to characterize or benchmark larger-scale quantum systems, and we may also learn something more about the nature of entanglement in these many-body systems,” says Karamlou.

Additional co-authors of the study are   Sarah E. Muschinske, Cora N. Barrett, Agustin Di Paolo, Leon Ding, Patrick M. Harrington, Max Hays, Rabindra Das, David K. Kim, Bethany M. Niedzielski, Meghan Schuldt, Kyle Serniak, Mollie E. Schwartz, Jonilyn L. Yoder, Simon Gustavsson, and Yariv Yanay.

This research is funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation, the STC Center for Integrated Quantum Materials, the Wellesley College Samuel and Hilda Levitt Fellowship, NASA, and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.

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UC Berkeley innovators featured in ‘Pathways to Invention’ film

Are inventors born or made? Berkeley engineers explore that question in the award-winning documentary “ Pathways to Invention ,” set to premiere in May on PBS stations nationwide. The 60-minute special follows eight “modern inventors of diverse backgrounds and their journeys as they develop life-changing innovations.”

Paige Balcom (right) with lab mate Alanna Cooney. Balcom was a Fulbright Scholar visiting Uganda when she became inspired to develop a small-scale community recycling process and co-founded Takataka Plastics. (Photo courtesy Maaia Mark Productions)

Among those profiled are Berkeley alumni Paige Balcom (Ph.D.’22 ME), Corten Singer (B.A.’17 CS, B.A.’17 CogSci, M.S.’18 EECS) and Tomás Vega (B.A.’17 CS, B.A.’17 CogSci). Civil engineering professor Ashok Gadgil and Chris Myers, former senior lab manager at the CITRIS Invention Lab , are also featured.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the film will first air at 10 p.m. PT on Wednesday, May 1, on KQED 9. It will also air at 9 p.m. PT on Tuesday, May 7, on KQED WORLD and will be available to stream after May 1 in the PBS app. The film will also be available for viewing on May 2 during the Jacobs Spring Design Showcase at UC Berkeley.

In the film, the inventors share their perspectives and the insights they gained while innovating against considerable odds. By inviting us into their workspaces and telling their stories, they hope to provide inspiration to the next generation of inventors.

Paige Balcom was a Fulbright Scholar visiting Uganda when she became inspired to develop a small-scale community recycling process in Gulu, employing street-connected, at-risk youth. This supposedly “impossible” initiative was the genesis of Takataka Plastics, where Balcom now serves as co-founder and is currently working to expand to five towns across Uganda, as well as other low- to middle-income countries.

Tomás Vega and Corten Singer, from left, work on MouthPad^ and co-founded Augmental. (Photo courtesy Maaia Mark Productions)

Corten Singer and Tomás Vega , co-founders of Augmental, set out to develop assistive technologies to change the paradigm of human-device interaction. Their invention, MouthPad ^ , transforms the concept of the computer mouse or trackpad into a Bluetooth-enabled device that rests like a retainer on the roof of one’s mouth. Controlled by the tongue, mouth pressure and head gestures, MouthPad ^ enables more universal access to personal devices, like smartphones, computers and tablets.

In addition to celebrating innovation, curiosity and resilience, the documentary examines how the inventors are making a “tangible impact” in such fields as biotech, medical diagnostics and prosthetics, sustainable agriculture, food production, software development and materials science.

Pathways to Invention is produced by Maaia Mark Productions in association with the Lemelson-MIT Program with funding from The Lemelson Foundation and Berkeley Engineering. The program is presented by American Public Television.