MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT has been named to Times Higher Education’s 2024 World’s Best Universities list, reports Cecilia Rodriguez for Forbes. “The largest edition of the World University Rankings 2024 includes 1,904 universities—up from 1,799 last year—from 108 countries and regions, assessing research-intensive universities across 18 performance indicators covering their core missions of teaching, research, knowledge transfer and internationalization,” writes Rodriguez.

A study by researchers from MIT and Harvard examined the potential impact of the use of AI technologies on the field of radiology, reports Laura Landro for The Wall Street Journal. “Both AI models and radiologists have their own unique strengths and areas for improvement,” says Prof. Nikhil Agarwal.

MIT researchers have developed a new underwater system that could enable long-range and low-power underwater communication, reports Edd Gent for IEEE Spectrum. “The reason why this is really exciting is because now you start opening up many of the coastal monitoring applications,” says Prof. Fadel Adib. “It’s a turning point from this being a technology that is intellectually super interesting that we hope will work, to saying we know that this works and we have a path to deployment.”

William Pounds, the former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management who was “famous for being willing to approach and talk to anybody,” has died at age 95. “As an administrator, he wanted to guide business school graduates to become able leaders of corporations like the ones where he had worked," writes Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe.

Researchers from Atlantic Quantum, an MIT startup building quantum computers, have published new research showing “the architecture of the circuits underlying its quantum computer produces far fewer errors than the industry standard,” reports Rashi Shrivastava for Forbes.

A new study by Prof. Jonathan Gruber finds that helping undocumented immigrants in the U.S. connect with primary care doctors could help reduce ER visits, reports Cara Murez for HealthDay. “The data showed a 21% drop in emergency department use, as well as a 42% drop for folks with high-risk medical profiles,” writes Murez. 

Prof. Eric Klopfer, co-director of the RAISE initiative (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment in Education), speaks with GBH reporter Diane Adame about the importance of providing students guidance on navigating artificial intelligence systems. “I think it's really important for kids to be aware that these things exist now, because whether it's in school or out of school, they are part of systems where AI is present,” says Klopfer. “Many humans are biased. And so the [AI] systems express those same biases that they've seen online and the data that they've collected from humans.”

MIT Innovation Fellow Brian Deese speaks with Financial Times reporter Gideon Rachman to explain Bidenomics and how it is impacting the economy. “I think the term [Bidenomics] has taken on a lot of different elements,” says Deese. “To me, it’s a description of what are the three core economic policy priorities of the Biden administration that have played out over the course the last two years.”

Prof. James Fujimoto, research affiliate Eric Swanson SM ’84 and David Huang PhD ’93 have won a Lasker Award for their work inventing optical coherence tomography, which can “detect conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy earlier than previous methods, preventing blindness,” reports Noah Weiland and Cade Metz for The New York Times. “O.C.T. now is commonly used in ophthalmology offices, where the patient simply rests a chin and forehead against an instrument for a brief scan,” write Weiland and Metz. “The method, invented in 1991, offers a staggering amount of detail about the retina.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson spotlights Form Energy, an MIT startup that will produce long-duration batteries using an electrochemical reaction that turns iron into rust and back again. Patterson notes that the goal at Form Energy was to “develop batteries that were cheap, didn’t catch fire, didn’t need scarce and costly metals like cobalt and lithium, and could produce electricity for a long time.”

Boston Globe reporter Macie Parker spotlights the new John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square, the first building to open in MIT’s redevelopment of the 14-acre Volpe site that will ultimately include “research labs, retail, affordable housing, and open space, with the goal of not only encouraging innovation, but also enhancing the surrounding community.” Parker highlights the green technology included in the new Volpe Center: solar panels; triple-paned glass; electric vehicle charging stations; a rainwater reclamation and reuse system; and green and cool roof technology to lower energy use. 

Dan Stack PhD ’20 speaks with TechCrunch reporter Tim De Chant about his startup Electrified Thermal Solutions, which is developing electrified firebricks to help decarbonize building materials.