MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Researchers from MIT and Harvard have developed a “3D-printed ‘lab-on-a-chip’ that could detect Covid-19 immunity levels and Covid infections from saliva within two hours,” reports Ben Leonard and Ruth Reader for Politico.

Prof. Seth Mnookin, director of the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing, writes for The Boston Globe about the debate over the banning and then unbanning of Juul e-cigarettes. “The reactions to those two moves ­ — first banning Juul to combat youth vaping and then reversing course to further study the science ­ — represent an unprecedented division in the field of tobacco control,” writes Mnookin.

Forbes contributor Russell Flannery spotlights how Prof. Tyler Jacks has “made a mark in cancer work not only by his research but his ability to bring different organizations together.” Jacks discussed the Biden administration’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative and noted that: “Having specific goals and an action plan for cancer is important. Having a strategy about how to approach the cancer problem is equally important.”

Gradiant, an MIT startup founded by Anurag Bajpayee PhD ’12, S.M. ‘08 and Prakash Govindan PhD ’12, has developed an energy efficient system that purifies water by mimicking natural rainfall cycles, reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “Nature has the advantage of having all the surface area of the oceans available freely and a free source of energy from the sun,” Govindan said. “We have to engineer this into a compact, highly efficient, and energy-efficient industrial device.”

Prof. Miho Mazereeuw speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Lindsay Ellis about courses she is teaching at MIT focused on environmental risk and disaster-resilient design. During her course last semester, “students weighed how to build environments that can cope with a changing climate as well as the social inequities that disasters reveal,” writes Ellis.

Prof. Anna Stansbury speaks with Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast about her research on the labor market and worker power. “In my work, when I'm trying to measure worker power," says Stansbury, "I'm trying to say, ‘What would a given worker be paid in a kind of market situation without that power? And then how do different factors give that worker the ability to share in the profits of the firm?’"

Prof. Julien de Wit speaks with Newsweek reporter Ed Browne about the wealth of information that the James Webb telescope will be providing about the universe. "In terms of information content, we're pretty much going from listening to the radio, to having television," said de Wit.

Researchers at MIT have developed a silk-based substitute that could be used to replace microplastics, reports Matthew Rozsa for Salon. Prof. Benedetto Marelli and postodoctoral associate Muchun Liu explain that they have demonstrated that “silk protein can be used as a technological material in agricultural products and cosmetics – it can protect and control the release of active ingredients, and it can be biodegraded.”

Writing for Metropolis, James McCown highlights the architecture of the new MIT buildings in Kendall Square, particularly the property at 314 Main Street, which houses the new MIT Press Bookstore and MIT Museum. “To walk across the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to get a crash course in 20th and early 21st-century architecture,” writes McCown. “Who wouldn’t want to add their signature to this splendid architectural canvas?”

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with Andy Uhler of Marketplace about gasoline process and the crack spread, the difference between the cost of oil and the cost to refine it. “Increases in the crack spread that we’ve seen recently has been just supply and demand,” said Knittel.

Craig Ferguson, a full stack developer at the MIT Media Lab, has developed a mobile mental health game, dubbed Paradise Island, that sends users on real-life missions in exchange for rewards and is based on a type of therapy called behavioral  activation, reports Elissaveta Brandon for Fast Company. “One of the goals behind the app is to teach people a lesson, to help them build skills and resilience,” Ferguson says. “If you do this enough, that reflection step is to make people realize ‘When I was feeling bad, I really didn’t think running would help, but it did,’ and remember that.”

The Economist spotlights how Prof. Carlo Ratti and researchers from the MIT Senseable City Lab are working on revitalizing neglected spaces in Kosovo’s capital. “We wanted to start something that could continue in the long term: small interventions that, little by little, could become part of the city,” says Ratti.

Researchers at MIT, led by Prof. Xuanhe Zhao, have created a wearable ultrasound medical device, reports Jeremy Hsu for New Scientist. “The ultrasound stickers may provide a more flexible imaging option for hospitals to monitor patients without requiring human technicians to hold ultrasound probes, and they could be useful in situations where technicians are in short supply,” writes Hsu.

Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with Washington Post reporter Pranshu Verma about the growing field of smart textiles and his work creating fabrics embedded with computational power. Fink and his colleagues “have created fibers with hundreds of silicon microchips to transmit digital signals — essential if clothes are to automatically track things like heart rate or foot swelling. These fibers are small enough to pass through a needle that can be sown into fabric and washed at least 10 times.”

Prof. Anant Agarwal, founder and CEO of edX, speaks with Kirk Carapezza of GBH News about how edX began working with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine in March 2022 to offer all Ukrainian colleges access to its platform. “When the unfortunate war started in the Ukraine, we felt that we had to act,” said Anant Agarwal, founder and CEO of edX. “These are courses and programs on our platform that Ukrainian students who are registered at the universities can now take up completely for free.”