MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT researchers have developed an online interactive tool aimed at helping consumers quantify the costs of buying an electric or gas-powered vehicle. The tool demonstrates how electric vehicles may initially be more expensive, but are often cheaper in the long-run, reports Veronica Penny for The New York Times. Prof. Jessika Trancik notes that she hopes the tool will “help people learn about how those upfront costs are spread over the lifetime of the car.”

TechCrunch reporter Darrell Etherington writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system that devises hardware architecture that can speed up a robot’s operations. Etherington notes that “this research could help unlock the sci-fi future of humans and robots living in integrated harmony.”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money about his book, “Why Nations Fail,” whether the attack on the U.S. Capitol signals difficulties for U.S. institutions, and how politicians can create more shared prosperity through a “good jobs” agenda. "We are still at a point where we can reverse things," Acemoglu says. "But I think if we paper over these issues, we will most likely see a huge deterioration in institutions. And it can happen very rapidly."

CBS News spotlights how two MIT researchers have been named to key roles on the Biden administration’s science team. Prof. Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute, has been nominated to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, will co-chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Zuber said she hopes to "restore trust in science, and pursue breakthroughs that benefit all people."

Prof. Gary Gensler will be the Biden administration’s pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, reports Matthew Goldstein, Lauren Hirsch and Andrew Ross Sorkin for The New York Times. “Mr. Gensler is a veteran regulator who played a central role in bringing the big banks to heel in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, giving new teeth to a watchdog agency.”

Forbes contributor Wayne Rush spotlights Prof. David Rand’s research examining how to most effectively combat the spread of misinformation. “They forget to think about whether it’s true, but rather how many likes they’ll get,” says Rand of why people share misinformation on social media. “Another feature of social media is that people are more likely to be friends with people who share common ideas.”

Writing for The New Yorker, Sheelah Kolhatkar spotlights Biobot Analytics, an MIT startup that is studying sewage for the purpose of tracking diseases and the spread of Covid-19. “It’s about our health and well-being in general,” says Biobot co-founder and president Newsha Ghaeli. “It’s about understanding nutrition disparities in communities, understanding stress levels, pervasive infectious diseases like influenza or Zika virus.”

Graduate student Carmelo Ignaccolo speaks with New York Times reporter Emma Bubola about how young professionals are returning to Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Bubola spotlights Ignaccolo's efforts to help an organization map and identify small rural towns in Italy in which it would be possible to facilitate remote-working opportunities as a tool to revamp local economies.

Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto writes that MIT, Harvard, several research hospitals and life-sciences companies have selected a site for a new biologics manufacturing and innovation center. The project is aimed at expediting “discoveries for biotech treatments in university labs by allowing researchers to bypass the long waits that are common at contract manufacturers,” writesChesto. 

“Dealing with the present constitutional crisis requires more than removing Donald Trump from office," writes Professor Charles Stewart III. "It requires creating the conditions for electoral politics to marginalize opponents of constitutional government.”