MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Vox reporter Kelsey Piper writes that a new report by Prof. Kevin Esvelt provides a roadmap for how to prepare for the next pandemic. In the report, Esvelt emphasizes that: “We’re not helpless, whether against nature or malign actions by human beings. We do have to invest in actually being prepared, but if we’re prepared, we could weather even a worst-case scenario: a deliberate release of a human-made virus engineered to be both extra deadly and extra contagious.”

Scientists from around the world, including researchers at MIT, have found evidence of past chemical reactions between liquid water and carbon-compounds on Mars, reports Laura Baisas for Popular Science. “We believe we have found these kinds of liquid water environments and organic compounds together. That’s sort of the limit to how we can describe what we call habitability,” explains postdoc Eva Linghan Scheller.

The Boston Globe’s Mark Feeney spotlights the new MIT Museum exhibit ‘To Look and Learn: The Creative Photography Laboratory at MIT.’ “It’s more history lesson than photo show, but since the history concerns photography that’s not a problem,” writes Feeney. “Among the many books, brochures, posters, letters and clippings are some 80 photographs either by CPL faculty, CPL students, or exhibited in shows the program sponsored.”

Katin Miller ’99, general manager for the Amazon fulfillment center in Fall River, speaks with Boston 25 reporter Robert Goulston about how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted holiday shopping. “What has changed a lot is people buy bigger things online than they used to,” says Miller. “Every year is bigger than the previous year so these are record breaking volumes absolutely.”

“Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It” by Prof. Amy Finkelstein, Boston University Prof. Ray Fisman, and Stanford University Prof. Liran Einav was named one of the best economics books of 2022 reports Martin Wolf for Financial Times.

Jake Becraft PhD ’19 and former postdoctoral associate Tasuku Kitada co-founded Strand Therapeutics, a biotech firm developing mRNA therapies for cancer, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. They created “a way to activate mRNA in the presence of particular microRNAs – a much more useful application for therapies,” writes Cross. 

WCVB reporter Karen Holmes Ward spotlights Joshua Reed-Diawuoh MBA ’20, founder of Gria Food Co., a U.S.-based food company that provides locally sourced snacks from Africa to customers around the world. Ward highlights Diawuoh’s work with Commonwealth Kitchen, a commercial kitchen that aims to uplift local businesses.

Forbes reporter John Cumbers spotlights Jasmina Aganovic ’09 for her work in combining biotechnology with skincare. "Biotechnology enables us to expand the ingredient palette of the beauty industry to molecules in all parts of the tree of life, ethically and sustainably," says Aganovic.

MIT scientists have developed a miniature antenna that could one day be used to help safely transmit data from within living cells “by resonating with acoustic rather than electromagnetic waves,” reports Andrew Chapman for Scientific American. “A functioning antenna could help scientists power, and communicate with, tiny roving sensors within the cell,” writes Chapman, “helping them better understand these building blocks and perhaps leading to new medical treatments.”

Researchers from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms are developing robots that can effectively self-assemble and could even build large structures, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “At the system’s center are voxels (a term borrowed from computer graphics), which carry power and data that can be shared between pieces,” writes Heater. “The pieces form the foundation of the robot, grabbing and attaching additional voxels before moving across the grid for further assembly.”

A new study by MIT scientists finds that Earth can self-regulate its temperature thanks to a stabilizing feedback mechanism that works over hundreds of thousands of years, reports Troy Farah for Salon. “The finding has big implications for our understanding of the past, but also how global heating is shaping the future of our home world,” writes Farah. “It even helps us better understand the evolution of planetary temperatures that can make the search for alien-inhabited exoplanets more fruitful.”