Three members of the MIT Media Lab community have been named 2026–27 fellows at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, one of the world's leading centers for interdisciplinary exploration at Harvard University: research scientist from Fluid Interfaces group Nataliya Kos'myna, and alumni Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao and J. Nathan Matias.

Nataliya Kos'myna develops and designs end-to-end brain-computer interfaces, inspired by the idea of creating a partnership between AI and human intelligence. During her fellowship, she will explore the invisible yet profound ways our everyday tools — smartphones, TikTok, generative AI — reshape our minds, memory, reasoning, creativity, and agency, drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and research on human-computer interaction.

Alum Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, now an associate professor at Cornell University, is the founder and director of the Hybrid Body Lab, a transdisciplinary research group exploring cultural and social perspectives in the design of on-skin interfaces. At Radcliffe, she will develop a book on the social and cultural dimensions of these technologies, proposing design interventions that empower rather than constrain how close-body wearable devices are conceived and experienced.

Alum J. Nathan Matias, now an assistant professor in the Cornell University Department of Communication, where he leads CAT Lab, is a Guatemalan American computational social scientist, writer, and organizer. His pioneering participatory science with millions of people investigating AI and social media has been published in Nature, PNAS, Science, and across computer science. At Radcliffe, he will advance the science of civil liberties by developing scientific methods, organizing communities, and cultivating the imagination needed to nurture and protect basic human freedoms and capacities in the digital era.

Yearlong Radcliffe fellowships provide the rare opportunity to pursue ambitious projects, with each cohort drawing leading scientists, writers, scholars, public intellectuals, and artists across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and creative arts.