In the Media

MIT researchers have developed a non-invasive, wearable pacemaker that stimulates the heart using ultrasound, writes Physics World reporter Tami Freeman. “For cardiac pacing, we envisage that the final goal of NUP [Non-Invasive Ultrasound Pacemaker] technology is to be a permanent alternative to a long-term implanted pacemaker,” says Prof. Xuanhe Zhao. “More broadly, we are interested in expanding ultrasound-enabled bioelectronic medicine beyond cardiac pacing toward other organs and therapeutic applications where non-invasive, spatially precise modulation could have clinical impact.” 

In a Forbes opinion piece, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, emphasizes the importance of place planning, which includes factoring climate risks in retirement decisions, and considering whether a community will work for an individual in the future. “If where we live increasingly shapes our health, mobility, access to care, social connection, and resilience, then retirement planning needs another dimension beyond financial preparedness,” writes Coughlin. “It is no longer simply, ‘Is this where I want to grow old?’ It is, ‘Will this place continue to support me as I grow older?’"

A study by MIT researchers has found evidence that the first signs of ozone depletion appeared in 1957 in the upper tropical stratosphere, driven by carbon tetrachloride, an industrial chemical introduced in the 1930s and widely used as a dry-cleaning and degreasing agent, writes Gizmodo reporter Ellyn Lapointe. “This finding underscores the importance of long-term atmospheric monitoring so that we can fully understand how it responds to chemical pollution,” Lapointe notes.

Associate Prof. Zachary Cordero speaks with Live Science reporter Larissa G. Capella about why cold welding—a process in which metals fuse together— can easily occur in space and the hazards it can pose. “If there is cold welding, things can become stuck in place,” says Cordero. “If you have a deployable structure and there's cold welding, you might freeze the mechanism, or a door might become locked, or something might become immobilized, which you don't want.” 

Prof. David Autor discusses the potential future economic impact of AI in a panel discussion moderated by Wall Street Journal reporter George Anders. “Technology automates, it complements and it creates new expertise and new work,” says Autor. “I don’t think we’re headed into a new world where human judgment, moral reasoning, empathy and know-how have no economic value.” 

In a New York Times opinion piece, Prof. Carlo Ratti examines the debate around Ferrari’s first electric vehicle (EV) and the future of EV self-driving technology. “The self-driving technology available in most EVs turns the car into something summoned on demand,” writes Ratti. “Our work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that autonomous driving could allow cities to operate with a small fraction of today’s vehicles while reducing parking demand by as much as 85 percent.”

For The Hill, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen and contributor Mark Iwry argue that the U.S. should implement federal legislation for automatic retirement savings plans. “Without burdening small employers, bipartisan auto-IRA legislation would make retirement saving easy for employees without an IRA or retirement plan at work,” write Pozen and Iwry. “Such legislation would extend tax-favored retirement savings to the tens of millions of workers now left behind, fulfilling the stated intent of the recent executive order ‘to ensure that every American worker has access to a simple, portable, low-cost retirement-savings option.’”

For the Boston Globe, reporter Aaron Pressman features MIT startup VulcanForms, a 3D printing manufacturer expected to create over 1,000 jobs with a new 1-million-square-foot-plant in Devens, MA. The facility will bring capacity for more customers in medical devices, aerospace and defense, and consumer goods industries. “MIT professor John Hart started the company with grad student Martin Feldmann [‘14] as a way to bring 3D printing techniques using lasers and powdered metals to larger-scale manufacturing jobs,” writes Pressman.

Fortune reporter Emma Burleigh spotlights MIT’s financial aid programs that provides free tuition to students whose parents earn less than $200,000 a year. Additionally, tuition, housing, dining, fees, books, and personal expenses for students with parental incomes of less than $100,000 are covered by MIT. “Famed research university MIT is not only footing the tuition bill of its lower-income students—it’s making ‘free college’ a reality,” writes Burleigh. 

The Economist’s “Bartleby Newsletter” spotlights a survey led by Prof. Danielle Li that found American employees were less likely to opt into training AI after learning how their data could be used. "In an experiment, the researchers offered to buy survey data from participants; those who had been shown a video on how data could be used to train AI were less willing to sell,” writes Andrew Palmer. 

MIT researchers have found that colon cancer cells can “change their identity, allowing them to travel through the body and form new tumors,” reports Daniella Gray for Newsweek. The findings could point to future treatments that can prevent metastasis—the leading cause of death for colorectal cancer patients, Gray explains. 

For Archinect, reporter Niall Patrick Walsh spotlights how the full archive of architect and alumnus I.M. Pei ‘40 has been donated to the MIT Museum. “Among the materials are drawings and documents from some of Pei’s best-known works, including the Louvre Museum modernization project in Paris, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland,” writes Walsh. “The archive also contains records relating to four buildings designed by Pei on the MIT campus: the Green Building, Dreyfus Building, Landau Building, and Wiesner Building.”

Chronicle of Philanthropy reporter Maria Di Mento spotlights how the creation of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing allowed MIT to develop new “interdisciplinary programs to prepare students for an AI-saturated world and help them understand the social and ethical implications of digital technologies.” Prof. Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the Schwarzman College of Computing, explains that: “MIT realized that effective education in the age of AI has to look different than it has in the past. Traditional siloing of expertise won’t work when AI is expected to touch nearly every part of people’s lives and is changing the way people in disciplines outside of computing are advancing their work.”

Writing for Forbes, contributor Ron Schmelzer highlights Describe Anything, Anywhere, at Any Moment (DAAAM), a new system developed by MIT researchers that could enable robots to capture details of objects they see while exploring an environment. In the future, the system could allow factory workers to send robotic assistants to find items. DAAAM “lets a robot build a detailed map of a space, attach descriptions to objects in that map, and answer plain English questions later,” Schmelzer explains. 

Fast Company reporter Nate Berg spotlights how the full archive of architect and alumnus I.M. Pei ‘40  will be housed at the MIT Museum, noting that the collection will be the largest single repository of works by Pei. “I think there’s something really fascinating about architectural projects that are not necessarily burdened by the realities of building,” says Jonathan Duval, assistant curator of architecture and design at the MIT Museum. “Those are moments where you can really see what an architect’s priorities and intentions might have been.”