People are increasingly turning to software to design complex material structures like airplane wings and medical implants. But as design models become more capable, our fabrication techniques haven’t kept up. Even 3D printers struggle to reliably produce the precise designs created by algorithms. The problem has led to a disconnect between the ways a material is expected to perform and how it actually works.

Now, MIT researchers have created a way for models to account for 3D printing’s limitations during the design process. In experiments, they showed their approach could be used to make materials that perform much more closely to the way they’re intended to.

“If you don’t account for these limitations, printers can either over- or under-deposit material by quite a lot, so your part becomes heavier or lighter than intended. It can also over- or underestimate the material performance significantly,” says Gilbert W. Winslow Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Josephine Carstensen. “With our technique, you know what you’re getting in terms of performance because the numerical model and experimental results align very well.”

The approach is described in the journal Materials and Design, in an open-access paper co-authored by Carstensen and PhD student Hajin Kim-Tackowiak.

Matching theory with reality

Over the last decade, new design and fabrication technologies have transformed the way things are made, especially in industries like aerospace, automotive, and biomedical engineering, where materials must reach precise weight-to-strength ratios and other performance thresholds. In particular, 3D printing allows materials to be made with more complex internal structures.

“3D printing processes generally give us more flexibility because we don’t have to come up with forms or molds for things that would be made through more traditional means like injection molding,” Kim-Tackowiak explains.

As 3D printing has made production more precise, so have methods for designing complex material structures. One of the most advanced computational design techniques is known as topology optimization. Topology optimization has been used to generate new and often surprising material structures that can outperform conventional designs, in some cases approaching the theoretical limits of certain performance thresholds. It is currently being used to design materials with optimized stiffness and strength, maximized energy absorption, fluid permeability, and more.

But topology optimization often creates designs at extremely fine scales that 3D printers have struggled to reliably reproduce. The problem is the size of the print head that extrudes the material. If the design specifies a layer to be 0.5 millimeters thick, for instance, and the print head is only capable of extruding 1-millimeter-thick layers, the final design will be warped and imprecise.

Another problem has to do with the way 3D printers create parts, with a print head extruding a thin bead of material as it glides across the printing area, gradually building parts layer by layer. That can cause weak bonding between layers, making the part more prone to separation or failure.

The researchers sought to address the disconnect between expected and actual properties of materials that arise from those limitations.

“We thought, ‘We know these limitations in the beginning, and the field has gotten better at quantifying these limitations, so we might as well design from the get-go with that in mind,” Kim-Tackowiak says.

In previous work, Carstensen developed an algorithm that embedded information about the print nozzle size into design algorithms for beam structures. For this paper, the researchers built off that approach to incorporate the direction of the print head and the corresponding impact of weak bonding between layers. They also made it work with more complex, porous structures that can have extremely elastic properties.

The approach allows users to add variables to the design algorithms that account for the center of the bead being extruded from a print head and the exact location of the weaker bonding region between layers. The approach also automatically dictates the path the print head should take during production.

The researchers used their technique to create a series of repeating 2D designs with various sizes of hollow pores, or densities. They compared those creations to materials made using traditional topology optimization designs of the same densities.

In tests, the traditionally designed materials deviated from their intended mechanical performance more than materials designed using the researchers’ new technique at material densities under 70 percent. The researchers also found that conventional designs consistently over-deposited material during fabrication. Overall, the researchers’ approach led to parts with more reliable performance at most densities.

“One of the challenges of topology optimization has been that you need a lot of expertise to get good results, so that once you take the designs off the computer, the materials behave the way you thought they would,” Carstensen says. “We’re trying to make it easy to get these high-fidelity products.”

Scaling a new design approach

The researchers believe this is the first time a design technique has accounted for both the print head size and weak bonding between layers.

“When you design something, you should use as much context as possible,” Kim-Tackowiak says. “It was rewarding to see that putting more context into the design process makes your final materials more accurate. It means there are fewer surprises. Especially when we’re putting so much more computational resources into these designs, it’s nice to see we can correlate what comes out of the computer with what comes out of the production process.”

In future work, the researchers hope to improve their method for higher material densities and for different kinds of materials like cement and ceramics. Still, they said their approach offered an improvement over existing techniques, which often require experienced 3D printing specialists to help account for the limitations of the machines and materials.

“It was cool to see that just by putting in the size of your deposition and the bonding property values, you get designs that would have required the consultation of somebody who’s worked in the space for years,” Kim-Tackowiak says.

The researchers say the work paves the way to design with more materials.

“We’d like to see this enable the use of materials that people have disregarded because printing with them has led to issues,” Kim-Tackowiak says. “Now we can leverage those properties or work with those quirks as opposed to just not using all the material options we have at our disposal.”

California’s Governor should sign S.B. 7, a common-sense bill to end some of the harshest consequences of automated abuse at work. EFF is proud to join dozens of labor, digital rights, and other advocates in support of the “No Robo Bosses Act.”

Algorithmic decision-making is a growing threat to workers. Bosses are using AI to assess the body language and voice tone of job candidates. They’re using algorithms to predict when employees are organizing a union or planning to quit. They’re automating choices about who gets fired. And these employment algorithms often discriminate based on gender, race, and other protected statuses. Fortunately, many advocates are resisting.

What the Bill Does

S.B. 7 is a strong step in the right direction. It addresses “automated decision systems” (ADS) across the full landscape of employment. It applies to bosses in the private and government sectors, and it protects workers who are employees and contractors. It addresses all manner of employment decisions that involve automated decisionmaking, including hiring, wages, hours, duties, promotion, discipline, and termination. It covers bosses using ADS to assist or replace a person making a decision about another person.

Algorithmic decision-making is a growing threat to workers.

The bill requires employers to be transparent when they rely on ADS. Before using it to make a decision about a job applicant or current worker, a boss must notify them about the use of ADS. The notice must be in a stand-alone, plain language communication. The notice to a current worker must disclose the types of decisions subject to ADS, and a boss cannot use an ADS for an undisclosed purpose. Further, the notice to a current worker must disclose information about how the ADS works, including what information goes in and how it arrives at its decision (such as whether some factors are weighed more heavily than others).

The bill provides some due process to current workers who face discipline or termination based on the ADS. A boss cannot fire or punish a worker based solely on ADS. Before a boss does so based primarily on ADS, they must ensure a person reviews both the ADS output and other relevant information. A boss must also notify the affected worker of such use of ADS. A boss cannot use customer ratings as the only or primary input for such decisions. And every worker can obtain a copy of the most recent year of their own data that their boss might use as ADS input to punish or fire them.

Other provisions of the bill will further protect workers. A boss must maintain an updated list of all ADS it currently uses. A boss cannot use ADS to violate the law, to infer whether a worker is a member of a protected class, or to target a worker for exercising their labor and other rights. Further, a boss cannot retaliate against a worker who exercises their rights under this new law. Local laws are not preempted, so our cities and counties are free to enact additional protections.

Next Steps

The “No Robo Bosses Act” is a great start. And much more is needed, because many kinds of powerful institutions are using automated decision-making against us. Landlords use it to decide who gets a home. Insurance companies use it to decide who gets health care. ICE uses it to decide who must submit to location tracking by electronic monitoring.

EFF has long been fighting such practices. We believe technology should improve everyone’s lives, not subject them to abuse and discrimination. We hope you will join us.

MIT professors Zachary Hartwig and Wanda Orlikowski exemplify a rare but powerful kind of mentorship — one grounded not just in intellectual excellence, but in deep personal care. They remind us that transformative academic leadership starts with humanity. 

Whether it's Hartwig’s ability to bring engineering brilliance to life through genuine personal connection, or Orlikowski’s unwavering support for those who share in her mission to create meaningful impact, both foster environments where people, not just ideas, can thrive. 

Their students and colleagues describe feeling seen, supported, and encouraged not only to grow as scholars, but as people. It’s this ethic of care, of valuing the human behind the research, that defines their mentorship and elevates those around them.

Hartwig and Orlikowski are two of the 2023-25 Committed to Caring cohort who are fostering transformative research through growth, independence, and support. For MIT graduate students, the Committed to Caring program recognizes those who go above and beyond.

Zachary Hartwig: Signposts on the way to new territory

Zachary (Zach) Seth Hartwig is an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) with a co-appointment at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). He has worked in the areas of large-scale applied superconductivity, magnet fusion device design, radiation detector development, and accelerator science and engineering. His active research focuses on the development of high-field superconducting magnet technologies for fusion energy and accelerated irradiation methods for fusion materials using ion beams.

One nominator expressed, “although he didn't formally become my advisor until after I submitted my thesis prospectus, I always felt like Zach had my back.” This feeling of support was shared by Hartwig’s advisees through numerous examples.

When the pandemic started, Hartwig made sure that the student had ongoing support and a safe place to simply exist as an international visiting student during a tumultuous time. This care often presented in small ways: when the mentee needed to debug their cryogenic system, Hartwig showed up at the lab every day to help plan the next test; when this same student struggled to write the introduction of their first paper, Hartwig continued to provide support; and when the student wanted to practice for their qualifying exam, Hartwig insisted on helping until the last day. Additionally, when the advisee’s funding was nearing its end, Hartwig secured transition support to bridge the gap.

The nominator reflected on Hartwig’s cheerful and positive mentorship style, noting that “through it all, he … always valued my ideas, he was never judgmental, he never raised his voice, he never dismissed me.” 

Hartwig characterizes himself as “highly supportive, but from the backseat.” He is active with and available to his students; however, it is essential to him that they are the ones driving the research. “Graduate students need to experience increasing amounts of autonomy, but within a supportive framework that fades as they need to rely on it less and less as they become independent researchers,” he notes.

Hartwig shapes the intellectual maturation of his students. He believes that graduate school is not solely about results or publications, but about whom students become in the process. 

“The most important output of a PhD program is not your results, your papers, or your thesis; it’s YOU,” he emphasizes. His mentorship is built around this philosophy, creating an environment where students steadily evolve into independent researchers.

Importantly, Hartwig cultivates a culture where daring, unconventional ideas are not just allowed — they’re encouraged. He models this approach through his own career, which has taken bold leaps across disciplines and technologies. 

“MIT should do things only MIT can do,” he tells his students. His message is clear: Graduate students should not be afraid to go against the grain.

This philosophy has inspired many of his students to explore nontraditional research paths, armed with the confidence that failure is not a setback, but a sign that they are asking ambitious questions. Hartwig regularly reinforces this, reminding students that null results and dead ends often teach us the most. 

“They’re the signposts you have to pass on the way to new territory,” he says.

Ultimately, one of the most fulfilling parts of Hartwig’s work is witnessing the moment when it all “clicks” for a student — when they begin to lead boldly, push back thoughtfully, and take true ownership of their research. “It’s a beautiful thing when it happens,” he reflects. 

For Hartwig, mentorship is about fostering not only the skills of a scientist, but the identity of one. His students don’t just grow in knowledge, they grow in courage, conviction, and clarity.

Wanda Orlikowski: Shaping research by supporting the people who make it happen

Wanda Orlikowski is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Information Technology and Organization Studies at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Her research examines technologies in the workplace, with a particular focus on how digital reconfigurations generate significant shifts in organizing, coordination, and accountability. She is currently exploring the digital transformation of work.

Through times of uncertainty, students always find support in Orlikowski. One of her nominators shared that they have encountered many moments of doubt during the research development phase of their dissertation. “I [have had] concerns … that I'm not making progress. I do all this work, and it’s not going anywhere, I keep returning back to where I started,” the mentee reflected. 

Orlikowski has walked this advisee through those moments patiently and with great empathy, connecting her own experiences with those of her students. She often talks about the research process not being a straight line of progress, but rather a spiral. 

“This metaphor … suggests that coming back to ideas again and again is in fact progress,” rather than a failure. “Every time I come back to it, I’m at a higher plane, and I’m refining the same idea further and further,” the nominator wrote.

Students say that Orlikowski makes an effort to support them through moments of doubt, turning these moments into opportunities for growth. “It has … been such a benefit for me to have her near-constant availability,” the student said. “She listens to my thoughts and lets me just talk and spitball ideas, without her interrupting.” 

Orlikowski pushes and prods her students to elaborate, clarify, and expand their thoughts. She does this proactively, spending many hours every week talking to her students, reading their writing, and making scrupulous comments on their work. 

Orlikowski has been remarkably perceptive when her students need support. One of the nominators struggled during their first holiday season in the PhD program, unable to visit their family. Orlikowski noticed the student’s isolation and reached out, inviting the student to her family’s Christmas dinner, a gesture that turned into a heartwarming tradition. 

“I gave her an orchid that first year, and to this day, it continues to bloom each year. Wanda regularly sends me pictures of it, and the joy she expresses in keeping it alive means so much to me. I feel that in her care, both the orchid and our connection have flourished,” the mentee remarks.

“One of the things I’ve appreciated most about Wanda is that she has never tried to change who I am,” the nominator adds. They go on to describe themselves as not a very strategic or extroverted person by nature, and for a long time, they struggled with the idea that these qualities might hinder their success in academia. “Wanda has helped me embrace my true self.”

“It’s not about fitting into a mold,” Orlikowski reminded the student, “It’s about being true to who you are, and doing great work.” Her support has made the student comfortable with their approach to both research and life.

The academic world often feels like it rewards self-promotion and strategic maneuvering, but Orlikowski has alleviated much of her students’ anxiety about whether they can be competitive without it. “You don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not,” she assures them. “The work will speak for itself.” 

Orlikowski’s support for her students extends beyond encouragement; she advocates for their work, helping them gain visibility and traction in the broader academic community. “It’s not just words — she has actively supported me, promoting my work through her network of students and peers,” the nominator articulated. 

Her belief in her mentees, and her willingness to support their work, has had a profound impact on their academic journey.

Just as the United States has prospered through its ability to draw talent from every corner of the globe, so too has MIT thrived as a magnet for the world’s most keen and curious minds — many of whom remain here to invent solutions, create companies, and teach future leaders, contributing to America’s success.

President Ronald Reagan remarked in 1989 that the United States leads the world “because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.” Those words ring still ring true 36 years later — and the sentiment resonates especially at MIT.

"To find people with the drive, skill, and daring to see, discover, and invent things no one else can, we open ourselves to talent from every corner of the United States and from around the globe,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MIT is an American university, proudly so — but we would be gravely diminished without the students and scholars who join us from other nations."

MIT’s steadfast commitment to attracting the best and brightest talent from around the world has contributed to not just its own success, but also that of the nation as whole. MIT’s stature as an international hub of education and innovation adds value to the U.S. economy and competitiveness in myriad ways — from foreign-born faculty delivering breakthroughs here and founding American companies that create American jobs to international students contributing over $264 million annually to the U.S. economy during the 2023-24 school year.

Highlighting the extent and value of its global character, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Activities recently expanded a new video series, “The World at MIT.” In it, 20 faculty members born outside the United States tell how they dreamed of coming to MIT while growing up abroad and eventually joined the MIT faculty, where they’ve helped establish and maintain global leadership in science while teaching the next generation of innovators. A common thread running through their stories is the importance of the campus’s distinct nature as a community that is both profoundly American and deeply connected to the people, institutions, and concerns of regions and nations around the globe.

Joining the MIT faculty in 1980, MIT President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif knew almost instantly that he would stay.

“I was impressed by the richness of the variety of groups of people and cultures here,” says Reif, who moved to the United States from Venezuela and eventually served as MIT’s president from 2012 to 2022. “There is no richer place than MIT, because every point of view is here. That is what makes the place so special.”

The benefits of welcoming international students and researchers to campus extend well beyond MIT. More than 17,000 MIT alumni born elsewhere now call the United States home, for example, and many have founded U.S.-based companies that have generated billions of dollars in economic activity.

Contributing to America’s prestige internationally, one-third of MIT’s 104 Nobel laureates — including seven of the eight Nobel winners over the last decade — were born abroad. Drawn to MIT, they went on to make their breakthroughs in the United States. Among them is Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry Moungi Bawendi, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2023 for his work in the chemical production of high-quality quantum dots.   

“MIT is a great environment. It’s very collegial, very collaborative. As a result, we also have amazing students,” says Bawendi, who lived in France and Tunisia as a child before moving to the U.S. “I couldn’t have done my first three years here, which eventually got me a Nobel Prize, without having really bold, smart, adventurous graduate students.”

The give-and-take among MIT faculty and students also inspires electrical engineering and computer science professor Akintunde Ibitayo (Tayo) Akinwande, who grew up in Nigeria.

“Anytime I teach a class, I always learn something from my students’ probing questions,” Akinwande says. “It gives me new insights sometimes, and that’s always the kind of environment I like — where I’m learning something new all the time.”

MIT’s global vibe inspires its students to not only explore worlds of ideas in campus labs and classrooms, but to journey the world itself. Forty-three percent of undergraduates pursued international experiences during the last academic year — taking courses at foreign universities, conducting research, or interning at multinational companies. MIT students and faculty alike are regularly engaged in research outside the United States, addressing some of the world’s toughest challenges and devising solutions that can be deployed back home, as well as abroad. In so doing, they embody MIT’s motto of “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), reflecting the educational ideals of MIT’s founders who promoted education for practical application.

As someone who loves exploring “lofty questions” along with the practical design of things, Nergis Mavalvala found a perfect fit at MIT and calls her position as the Marble Professor of Astrophysics and dean of the School of Science “the best job in the world.”

“Everybody here wants to make the world a better place and are using their intellectual gifts and their education to do so,” says Mavalvala, who emigrated from Pakistan. “And I think that’s an amazing community to be part of.”

Daniela Rus agrees. Now the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Rus was drawn to the practical application of mathematics while still a student in her native Romania.   

“And so, now here I am at MIT, essentially bringing together the world of science and math with the world of making things,” Rus says. “I’ve been here for two decades, and it’s been an extraordinary journey.”

The daughter of an Albert Einstein afficionado, Yukiko Yamashita grew up in Japan thinking of science not as a job, but a calling. MIT, where she is a professor of biology, is a place where people “are really open to unconventional ideas” and “intellectual freedom” thrives.

“There is something sacred about doing science. That’s how I grew up,” Yamashita says. “There are some distinct MIT characteristics. In a good way, people can’t let go. Every day, I am creating more mystery than I answer.”

For more about the paths that brought Yamashita and others to MIT and stories of how their disparate personal histories enrich the campus and wider community, visit the “World at MIT” videos website.

“Our global community’s multiplicity of ideas, experiences, and perspectives contributes enormously to MIT’s innovative and entrepreneurial spirit and, by extension, to the innovation and competitiveness of the U.S.,” says Vice Provost for International Activities Duane Boning, whose department developed the video series. “The bottom line is that both MIT and the U.S. grow stronger when we harness the talents of the world’s best and brightest.”

This is a weird story:

The US Secret Service disrupted a network of telecommunications devices that could have shut down cellular systems as leaders gather for the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

The agency said on Tuesday that last month it found more than 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards that could have been used for telecom attacks within the area encompassing parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

“This network had the power to disable cell phone towers and essentially shut down the cellular network in New York City,” said special agent in charge Matt McCool...

Through his rhetoric and promotion of U.S. fossil fuels, the president is trying to undermine global climate efforts.

The EPA administrator plans to sign off on the repeal's policy and legal justifications before his staff finishes the regulatory impact analysis.

Democratic governors and union workers said the offshore wind project promises to offer the region a new source of energy and jobs.

Twenty-six Republican attorneys general argue that EPA got it wrong in 2009 when it found that it could regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

President Donald Trump launched a trade probe of Brazil that will scrutinize deforestation, among other practices.

The numbers offer mixed messages about the state’s efforts to electrify the heavy-duty sector.

Officials said the proposed changes would slash emissions of methane, a potent contributor to climate change.

Property-linked finance is typically used to cover the cost of things such as rooftop solar panels or better insulation.

The contentious law aims to curb the loss of trees from the import of commodities like rubber, soy and beef.

The country's leading investment bank foresees China’s emissions peaking in 2028 at 11.3 billion tons.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 24 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02444-5

Wildland fires in snow-dominated regions such as the Arctic can have profound effects on snowpack characteristics. Satellite observations reveal a delay in snow cover formation in the Arctic following major wildland fires. Machine learning and causal analyses suggest that this delay is linked to fire-induced reductions in albedo and increases in surface temperature.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 24 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02418-7

Future exposure to coastal flooding in China is driven more by growing populations and economic activity rather than by rising seas and intensifying storm surges. Policymakers must anticipate these multiple risk drivers to better inform spatial planning and development strategies and to ensure effective, sustainable coastal adaptation.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 24 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02439-2

Coastal risk assessment under future climate change is important for effective adaptation, but multidimensional analyses are still rare. Here the researchers find that inappropriate development policies could have a greater effect on exposure to flooding than sea-level rise up to 2100 in China.

Whitney Zhang ’21 believes in the importance of valuing workers regardless of where they fit into an organizational chart.

Zhang is a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Economics studying labor economics. She explores how the technological and managerial decisions companies make affect workers across the pay spectrum. 

“I’ve been interested in economics, economic impacts, and related social issues for a long time,” says Zhang, who majored in mathematical economics as an undergraduate. “I wanted to apply my math skills to see how we could improve policies and their effects.”

Zhang is interested in how to improve conditions for workers. She believes it’s important to build relationships with policymakers, focusing on an evidence-driven approach to policy, while always remembering to center those the policies may affect. “We have to remember the people whose lives are impacted by business operations and legislation,” she says. 

She’s also aware of the complex intermixture of politics, social status, and financial obligations organizations and their employees have to navigate.

“Though I’m studying workers, it’s important to consider the entire complex ecosystem when solving for these kinds of challenges, including firm incentives and global economic conditions,” she says.

The intersection of tech and labor policy

Zhang began investigating employee productivity, artificial intelligence, and related economic and labor market phenomena early in her time as a doctoral student, collaborating frequently with fellow PhD students in the department.

A collaboration with economics doctoral student Shakked Noy yielded the 2023 study investigating ChatGPT as a tool to improve productivity. Their research found it substantially increased workers’ productivity on writing tasks, most so for workers who initially performed the worst on the tasks.

“This was one of the earliest pieces of evidence on the productivity effects of generative AI, and contributed to providing concrete data on how impactful these types of tools might be in the workplace and on the labor market,” Zhang says.

In other ongoing research — “Determinants of Irregular Worker Schedules” — Zhang is using data from a payroll provider to examine scheduling unpredictability, investigating why companies employ unpredictable schedules and how these schedules affect low-wage employees’ quality of life.

The scheduling project, conducted with MIT economics PhD student Nathan Lazarus, is motivated, in part, by existing sociological evidence that low-wage workers’ unpredictable schedules are associated with worse sleep and well-being. “We’ve seen a relationship between higher turnover and inconsistent, inadequate schedules, which suggests workers dis-prefer these kinds of schedules,” Zhang says.

At an academic roundtable, Zhang presented her results to Starbucks employees involved in scheduling and staffing. The attendees wanted to learn more about how different scheduling practices impacted workers and their productivity. “These are the kinds of questions that could reveal useful information for small businesses, large corporations, and others,” she says.

By conducting this research, Zhang hopes to better understand whether or not scheduling regulations can improve affected employees’ quality of life, while also considering potential unintended consequences. “Why are these schedules set the way they’re set?” she asks. “Do businesses with these kinds of schedules require increased regulation?”

Another project, conducted with MIT economics doctoral student Arjun Ramani, examines the linkages between offshoring, remote work, and related outcomes. “Do the technological and managerial practices that have made remote work possible further facilitate offshoring?” she asks. “Do organizations see significant gains in efficiency? What are the impacts on U.S. and offshore workers?”

Her work is being funded through the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

Putting people at the center

Zhang has observed the different kinds of people economics and higher education could bring together. She followed a dual enrollment track in high school, completing college-level courses with students from across a variety of demographic identities. “I enjoyed centering people in my work,” she says. “Taking classes with a diverse group of students, including veterans and mothers returning to school to complete their studies, made me more curious about socioeconomic issues and the policies relevant to them.”

She later enrolled at MIT, where she participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). She also completed an internship at the World Bank, worked as a summer analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and worked as an assistant for a diverse faculty cohort including MIT economists David Autor, Jon Gruber, and Nina Roussille. Autor is her primary advisor on her doctoral research, a mentor she cites as a significant influence.

“[Autor’s] course, 14.03 (Microeconomics and Public Policy), cemented connections between theory and practice,” she says. “I thought the class was revelatory in showing the kinds of questions economics can answer.”

Doctoral study has revealed interesting pathways of investigation for Zhang, as have her relationships with her student peers and other faculty. She has, for example, leveraged faculty connections to gain access to hourly wage data in support of her scheduling and employee impacts work. “Generally, economists have had administrative data on earnings, but not on hours,” she notes.

Zhang’s focus on improving others’ lives extends to her work outside the classroom. She’s a mentor for the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center College Access Program and a member of MIT’s Graduate Christian Fellowship group. When she’s not enjoying spicy soups or paddling on the Charles, she takes advantage of opportunities to decompress with her art at W20 Arts Studios.

“I wanted to create time for myself outside of research and the classroom,” she says.

Zhang cites the benefits of MIT’s focus on cross-collaboration and encouraging students to explore other disciplines. As an undergraduate, Zhang minored in computer science, which taught her coding skills critical to her data work. Exposure to engineering also led her to become more interested in questions around how technology and workers interact.

Working with other scholars in the department has improved how Zhang conducts inquiries. “I’ve become the kind of well-rounded student and professional who can identify and quantify impacts, which is invaluable for future projects,” she says. Exposure to different academic and research areas, Zhang argues, helps increase access to ideas and information.

This is the fifth installment in a blog series documenting EFF's findings from the Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. You can read additional posts here. 

When the team at Women Help Women signed into Instagram last winter, they were met with a distressing surprise: without warning, Meta had disabled their account. The abortion advocacy non-profit organization found itself suddenly cut off from its tens of thousands of followers and with limited recourse. Meta claimed Women Help Women had violated its Community Standards on “guns, drugs, and other restricted goods,” but the organization told EFF it uses Instagram only to communicate about safe abortion practices, including sharing educational content and messages aimed at reducing stigma. Eventually, Women Help Women was able to restore its account—but only after launching a public campaign and receiving national news coverage. 

Unfortunately, Women Help Women’s experience is not unique. Around a quarter of our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign submissions reported that their entire account or page had been disabled or taken down after sharing abortion information—primarily on Meta platforms. This troubling pattern indicates that the censorship crisis goes beyond content removal. Accounts providing crucial reproductive health information are disappearing, often without warning, cutting users off from their communities and followers entirely.

whw_screenshot.jpeg

What's worse, Meta appears to be imposing these negative account actions without clearly adhering to its own enforcement policies. Meta’s own Transparency Center stipulates that an account should receive multiple Community Standards violations or warnings before it is restricted or disabled. Yet many affected users told EFF they experienced negative account actions without any warning at all, or after only one alleged violation (many of which were incorrectly flagged, as we’ve explained elsewhere in this series). 

While Meta clearly has the right to remove accounts from its platforms, disabling or banning an account is an extreme measure. It completely silences a user, cutting off communication with their followers and preventing them from sharing any information, let alone abortion information. Because of this severity, Meta should be extremely careful to ensure fairness and accuracy when disabling or removing accounts. Rules governing account removal should be transparent and easy to understand, and Meta must enforce these policies consistently across different users and categories of content. But as our Stop Censoring Abortion results demonstrate, this isn't happening for many accounts sharing abortion information.  

Meta's Maze of Enforcement Policies 

If you navigate to Meta’s Transparency Center, you’ll find a page titled “How Meta enforces its policies.” This page contains a web of intersecting policies on when Meta will restrict accounts, disable accounts, and remove pages and groups. These policies overlap but don’t directly refer to each other, making it trickier for users to piece together how enforcement happens. 

At the heart of Meta's enforcement process is a strike system. Users receive strikes for posting content that violates Meta’s Community Standards. But not all Community Standards violations result in strikes, and whether Meta applies one depends on the “severity of the content” and the “context in which it was shared.” Meta provides little additional guidance on what violations are severe enough to amount to a strike or how context affects this assessment.  

According to Meta's Restricting Accounts policy, for most violations, 1 strike should only result in a warning—not any action against the account. How additional strikes affect an account differs between Facebook and Instagram (but Meta provides no specific guidance for Threads). Facebook relies on a progressive system, where additional strikes lead to increasing restrictions. Enforcement on Instagram is more opaque and leaves more to Meta’s discretion. Meta still counts strikes on Instagram, but it does not follow the same escalating structure of restrictions as it does on Facebook. 

Despite some vagueness in these policies, Meta is quite clear about one thing: On both Facebook and Instagram, an account should only be disabled or removed after “repeated” violations, warnings, or strikes. Meta states this multiple times throughout its enforcement policies. Its Disabling Accounts policy suggests that generally, an account needs to receive at least 5 strikes for Meta to disable or remove it from the platform. The only caveat is for severe violations, such as posting child sexual exploitation content or violating the dangerous individuals and organizations policy. In those extreme cases, Meta may disable an account after just one violation. 

Meta’s Practices Don’t Match Its Policies 

Our survey results detailed a different reality. Many survey respondents told EFF that Meta disabled or removed their account without warning and without indication that they had received repeated strikes.  It’s important to note that Meta does not have a unique enforcement process for prescription drug or abortion-related content. When EFF asked Meta about this issue, Meta confirmed that "enforcement actions on prescription drugs are subject to Meta's standard enforcement policies.” 

So here are a couple other possible explanations for this disconnect—each of them troubling in their own way:

Meta is Ignoring Its Own Strike System 

If Meta is taking down accounts without warning or after only one alleged Community Standards violation, the company is failing to follow its own strike system. This makes enforcement arbitrary and denies users the opportunity for correction that Meta's system supposedly provides. It’s also especially problematic for abortion advocates, given that Meta has been incorrectly flagging educational abortion content as violating its Community Standards. This means that a single content moderation error could result not only in the post coming down, but the entire account too.  

This may be what happened to Emory University’s RISE Center for Reproductive Health Research (a story we described in more detail earlier in this series). After sharing an educational post about mifepristone, RISE’s Instagram account was suddenly disabled. RISE received no earlier warnings from Meta before its account went dark. When RISE was finally able to get back into its account, it discovered only that this single post had been flagged. Again, according to Meta's own policies, one strike should only result in a warning. But this isn’t what happened here. 

Similarly, the Tamtang Foundation, an abortion advocacy organization based in Thailand, had its Facebook account suddenly disabled earlier this year. Tamtang told EFF it had received a warning on only one flagged post that it had posted 10 months prior to its account being taken down. It received none of the other progressive strike restrictions Meta claims to apply Facebook accounts. 

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Meta is Misclassifying Educational Content as "Extreme Violations" 

If Meta is accurately following its strike policy but still disabling accounts after only one violation, this points to an even more concerning possibility. Meta’s content moderation system may be categorizing educational abortion information as severe enough to warrant immediate disabling, treating university research posts and clinic educational materials as equivalent to child exploitation or terrorist content.  

This would be a fundamental and dangerous mischaracterization of legitimate medical information, and it is, we hope, unlikely. But it’s unfortunately not outside the realm of possibility. We already wrote about a similar disturbing mischaracterization earlier in this series. 

Users Are Unknowingly Receiving Multiple Strikes 

Finally, Meta may be giving users multiple strikes without notifying them. This raises several serious concerns.

First is the lack of transparency. Meta explicitly states in its "Restricting Accounts" policy that it will notify users when it “remove[s] your content or add[s] restrictions to your account, Page or group.” This policy is failing if users are not receiving these notifications and are not made aware there’s an issue with their account. 

It may also mean that Meta’s policies themselves are too vague to provide meaningful guidance to users. This lack of clarity is harmful. If users don’t know what's happening to their accounts, they can’t appeal Meta’s content moderation decisions, adjust their content, or understand Meta's enforcement boundaries moving forward. 

Finally—and most troubling—if Meta is indeed disabling accounts that share abortion information for receiving multiple violations, this points to an even broader censorship crisis. Users may not be aware just how many informational abortion-related posts are being incorrectly flagged and counted as strikes. This is especially concerning given that Meta places a one-year time limit on strikes, meaning the multiple alleged violations could not have accumulated over multiple years.  

The Broader Censorship Crisis 

These account suspensions represent just one facet of Meta's censorship of reproductive health information documented by our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. When combined with post removals, shadowbanning, and content restrictions, the message is clear: Meta platforms are increasingly unfriendly environments for abortion advocacy and education. 

If Meta wants to practice what it preaches, then it must reform its enforcement policies to provide clear, transparent guidelines on when and how strikes apply, and then consistently and accurately apply those policies. Accounts should not be taken down for only one alleged violation when the policies state otherwise.  

The stakes couldn't be higher. In a post-Roe landscape where access to accurate reproductive health information is more crucial than ever, Meta's enforcement system is silencing the very voices communities need most. 

This is the fifth post in our blog series documenting the findings from our Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. Read more at https://www.eff.org/pages/stop-censoring-abortion  

Affected by unjust censorship? Share your story using the hashtag #StopCensoringAbortion. Amplify censored posts and accounts, share screenshots of removals and platform messages—together, we can demonstrate how these policies harm real people.