MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

New York Times reporter Jeanna Smialek explores the work of Prof. Joshua Angrist, who was honored as a recipient of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work developing “research tools that help economists use real-life situations to test big theories, like how additional education affects earnings.” Angrist and his fellow recipients David Card and Guido Imbens “ushered in a new phase in labor economics that has now reached all fields of the profession,” said Prof. Trevon D. Logan of Ohio State.

Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with David Pogue of CBS Sunday Morning about what’s causing the current supply chain breakdowns. "The underlying cause of all of this is actually a huge increase in demand,” says Sheffi. “People did not spend during the pandemic. And then, all the government help came; trillions of dollars went to households. So, they order stuff. They order more and more stuff. And the whole global markets were not ready for this."

Researchers from MIT and other institutions analyzed images captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover and found that Mars’ Jezero crater was a lake 3.7 billion years ago, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “The new information shows the importance of sending rovers to explore the surface of Mars,” writes Strickland. “Previous images captured by orbiters had shown that this outcrop resembled the kind of fan-shaped river deltas we have on Earth. Perseverance's images show definitive proof of the river delta's existence.”

Rebecca Blank PhD ’83 has been selected as the next president of Northwestern University, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. “Blank’s selection as Northwestern’s 17th president represents something of a homecoming for her,” writes Nietzel. “She served on Northwestern's economics faculty from 1989-1999, where she was named the first tenured woman in the economics department. Her appointment will establish another record - she will be Northwestern’s first woman president.”

The MIT Haystack Observatory honored the work of Herbert Weiss, a trailblazing engineer and former researcher at MIT Lincoln Lab who helped establish Haystack, which operates a radio telescope whose work “is the stuff of scientific legend,” writes Thomas Farragher for The Boston Globe. “This place wouldn’t exist if he had not had the leadership and the vision and the drive to make it happen,” says Colin J. Lonsdale, director of Haystack.

TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights RFusion, a fully-integrated robotic arm developed by MIT researchers that “uses an RF antenna and camera mounted to an arm to find lost objects.”

Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Kevin Esvelt argues that research aimed at creating pandemic-causing viruses should be considered a matter of international security. “Natural pandemics may be inevitable. Synthetic ones, constructed with full knowledge of society’s vulnerabilities, are not,” writes Esvelt. “Let’s not learn to make pandemics until we can reliably defend against them.”

Boston Globe reporter Pranshu Verma spotlights how innovators in the greater Boston area, including a number of MIT startups, are “aiming their moonshot ideas at a climate crisis that has only gotten worse and made their task all the more urgent.” “That’s our purpose,” said Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner for The Engine. “We are here to back those super ambitious companies that are taking a big swing.”

Fortune reporter Nicole Gull McElroy spotlights how the MIT Innovation Initiative and the Sloan School of Management are opening Innovation HQ, a 50,000 square foot space that will house a cross-disciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship lab. “Innovation HQ will offer students, alumni, faculty and staff a place to work, collaborate and create with six departments, lab space, an innovator’s lounge and a new space for music and arts innovation called Voxel Lab,” writes McElroy.

A new amputation technique being developed by MIT researchers provides patients with more sensory feedback from prosthetic limbs, writes Anjana Ahuja for the Financial Times. “The technique could transform the way that amputation has long been viewed,” writes Ahuja, “not as a last-resort method that subtracts from the body but an act of rejuvenation with the potential to restore a sense of completeness.”

Professor Susan Solomon, geophysicist Joseph Farman, and Environmental Protection Agency official Stephen Andersen were recently honored with this year’s Future of Life award for their “significant role in our triumph over the depletion of the ozone layer,” reports Kelsey Piper for Vox.  

Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Pranshu Verma about the inspiration for her startup BloomerTech, which is focused on addressing heart disease in women, and the underrepresentation of women in clinical trials. As part of this effort, BloomerTech is developing a “sensor-enabled bra that feeds real-time heart data to doctors running clinical trials on women’s cardiovascular disease.”

Prof. David Autor joins On Point to discuss the economic and social crisis facing American men. “It matters because we care about the welfare of all individuals,” says Autor. “It affects the people they would partner with, their potential spouses. It affects their children. It affects the level of crime incarceration. It affects the tax base. it affects our ability to grow and innovate in all kinds of ways. We're all kind of in this together.”

Orna Therapeutics, which was co-founded by MIT researchers, is working on “programming RNA with genetic code that instructs a line to split into several strands and then repair itself in the shape of a circle,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Angelica LaVito. “Delivering those messages via circles may produce a more stable, longer-lasting signal, potentially treating cancer, autoimmune disorders, and genetic diseases.”