Research scientist Judah Cohen served as a panelist for the Boston Globe’s “The Reshaping of New England’s Seasons: What’s Happening to Our Weather?” event, reports Ken Mahan for The Boston Globe. Cohen and his fellow panelists discussed New England weather, sharing insights and answering questions from community members.
Graduate student Clarke Cyrus and his colleagues have developed “the Anemoia Device,” a physical machine that “uses a generative AI model to analyze an archival photograph, describe it in a short sentence, and, following the user’s own inputs, convert that description into a unique fragrance,” reports Grace Snelling for Fast Company. “Generative AI usually starts with a blank prompt,” says Clarke. “The dials replace that with a physical, easy-to-understand grammar. You’re not trying to ‘say the right thing’ to an algorithm, it’s more akin to tuning an instrument."
Prof. Jim Walsh speaks with WBUR’s Here & Now host Tiziana Dearing about increased military presence in the Middle East and methods to de-escalate tensions.
Prof. Pat Pataranutaporn speaks with The Guardian reporter Andrew Gregory about the lack of safety warnings and disclaimers in AI overviews, specifically in AI-generated health materials. “The absence of disclaimers when users are initially served medical information creates several critical dangers,” says Pataranutaporn. “Disclaimers serve as a crucial intervention point. They disrupt this automatic trust and prompt users to engage more critically with the information they receive.”
A new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has found a correlation between addiction and eye care, reports Hadley Barndollar for MassLive. “The study found nearly half of the patients with opioid use disorder being treated for the eye infection were eligible to initiate medication-assisted treatment,” explains Barndollar. “But medications were only initiated when an addiction consult occurred, highlighting how much more eye doctors responding to emergency rooms can offer patients beyond vision care.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with Bloomberg reporter David Westin about the shift toward automation in the workforce and the impact on workers. “There are many ways for us to use AI,” says Autor. “It’s incredibly flexible, malleable, plastic technology. You could use it to try to automate people out of existence. You could also use it to collaborate with people to make them more effective. But I also think that it depends on how we invest, how we build out those technologies.”
Writing for The Atlantic, Prof. Deb Roy explores the impact of chatbots on language and learning development. “The ordinary forces that tether speech to consequence—social sanction, legal penalty, reputational loss—presuppose a continuous agent whose future can be made worse by what they say,” writes Roy. “With LLMs, there is no such locus. …When the speaker is an LLM, the human stakes that ordinarily anchor speech have nowhere to attach.”
MIT Sloan School of Management Dean Richard M. Locke spoke with Financial Times Global Education Editor Andrew Jack about the 2026 Global MBA Ranking. MIT Sloan topped the ranking for the first time, and Locke said that “[MIT] Sloan is forging tight links with other parts of MIT, which is renowned for its engineering and science expertise, and focusing more on how AI could be used 'as a tool not to replace jobs but enhance them'. He add[ed]: 'We are exploring how we reinvent management education for the 21st century.’"
Eastern Edge, a food hall bordering the MIT campus, has debuted in Kendall Square, featuring nine local food vendors with roots in the Cambridge community, reports Kara Baskin for The Boston Globe. “It’s built to be a gathering space, and that’s something that we really enjoy at Clover,” says Julia Wrin Piper, CEO of Clover. “At MIT, it’s a privilege to be in a space where every great idea that humankind has ever had has been debated. That’s something that’s very unique to this specific food hall – to be in this hyper-intellectual space and be very grounded by these delicious experiences.”
Boston Magazine reporter Rachel Leah Blumenthal spotlights the opening of Eastern Edge, a new food hall debuting in Kendall Square. The venue, which borders the MIT campus, features a variety of vendors over its 11,000-square-foot space, and accepts TechCash.
Prof. Angela Belcher and Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia chat with Edgar B. Herwick III of GBH’s The Curiosity Desk about their efforts aimed at improving diagnostics for ovarian cancer. “We now know that ovarian cancer doesn’t originate in the ovaries. About 80% of the time, ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes, but it can sit there as this precancerous lesion,” explains Belcher. “There’s new technologies that can be invented and developed to detect it much earlier, because if it’s detected earlier…there’s such an opportunity to make an impact.”
Jerry Lu MFin ’24 speaks with Fast Company reporter Grace Snelling about his work developing a new AI tool that can be used to help figure skaters land their jumps and Olympic audiences better understand just how challenging a quadruple Axel is. “Some of the artistic sports were missing this data-driven storytelling ability—if you watch hockey on TV, it looks slow, but if you watch it in person, it looks fast,” Lu explains.
Lecturer Jim Aloisi speaks with Boston Globe reporter Ian Prasad Philbrick about fare evasion on the MBTA, and a need for transit reform. “The drill here shouldn’t be to obsess or focus about how much,” says Aloisi. “The drill should be where can we make cost-effective interventions that matter?”
A new study by Prof. Sara Seager and her colleagues has found a solar system that contradicts the patterns commonly “seen across the galaxy and in our own solar system,” reports Jacopo Prisco for CNN. The study offers “some of the first evidence for flipping the script on how planets form around the most common stars in our galaxy,” says Seager. “Even in a maturing field, new discoveries can remind us that we still have a long way to go in understanding how planetary systems are built.”
The MIT Welcome Center will host a community event to celebrate the Lunar New Year with “calligraphy, face painting, paper-lantern making, and hot cocoa,” reports Annie Sarlin for The Boston Globe. “The event will also include tai chi lessons and a performance from the MIT Lion Dance” team, writes Sarlin.