MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT Profs. Angela Belcher, Emery Brown, Paula Hammond and Feng Zhang have been honored with National Medals of Science and Technology, reports Michael T. Neitzel for Forbes. Additionally, R. Lawrence Edwards '76 received a National Medal of Science and Noubar Afeyan PhD '87, a member of the MIT Corporation, accepted a National Medal on behalf of Moderna. The recipients have been awarded “the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievements and leadership in science and technology,” explains Neitzel. 

Quanta Magazine reporter Charlie Wood spotlights how MIT researchers have contributed to the recent discoveries of new superconductive materials. Prof. Long Ju and his research team “placed a five-layer graphene flake on an insulator at a twisted angle and observed a rare electron behavior that normally requires a strong magnetic field to induce,” explains Wood. 

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have suggested that “the impact of news that is factually inaccurate — including fake news, misinformation and disinformation — pales in comparison to the impact of news that are factually accurate but misleading,” reports Sandra Matz for Salon. “According to researchers, for example, the impact of slanted news stories encouraging vaccine skepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic was about 46-fold greater than that of content flagged as fake by fact-checkers,” writes Matz. 

Forbes reporter Yola Robert spotlights Sloan alumna Mona Patel for her philanthropic work supporting education for girls and underserved communities. “For Patel, her passion for supporting education stems from her experience coming to America as an immigrant student and witnessing how transformational it was for her,” writes Robert. 

Iqbal Dhaliwal, executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), speaks with NPR reporter Ari Daniel about the positive social impact that can be brought forth by AI. "As this technical revolution unfolds in real time," says Dhaliwal, "we have a responsibility to rigorously study how these technologies can help or harm people's well-being, particularly people who experience poverty, and scale only the most effective AI solutions."

Prof. Anna Frebel spotlights the work of Cecilia Payne, whose research “laid the foundation of stellar astrophysics,” reports Liz Kruesi for National Geographic. “It is such a fundamental piece of understanding for humanity,” says Frebel of the importance of Payne’s work discovering that stars are mainly made up of hydrogen and helium 

A new study co-authored by Prof. Emeritus Frank Levy that finds chatbot-style artificial intelligence could “fuel a reshaping of the population and labor market map of America,” writes Steve Lohr for The New York Times. Levy and his colleagues found that midsize cities in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and South are “well positioned to use AI to become more productive, helping to draw more people to those areas.” 

President Sally Kornbluth speaks with undergraduate student Emiko Pope for the MIT Admissions Blog about her personal interests, passions, and life at MIT. Sally “is proud of MIT and how it can provide real solutions to society’s problems,” writes Pope. “She loves that you can get a daily fix of science because you are surrounded by such amazing people and endeavors.”

Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights the “Moving Objects” exhibit at the MIT Museum, which features 50 or so items from the museum’s permanent collection. “Over the course of five years, 140 truckloads got moved when the museum transferred its holdings from several sites to a new storage facility, in Medford,” Feeney writes. “The items in the show were chosen because in one way or another the movers found themselves affected by them. They were amusing or beautiful or unexpected or otherwise unusual.”