Nature reporter James Mitchell Crow spotlights Prof. Leonard Guarente’s work studying the impact of calorie restriction in life expectancy. Guarente’s research points to “the importance of a set of genes and associated proteins called sirtuins.” Guarente says: “If you make them more active, you extend the lifespan.”
Luke Hobson, assistant director of Industrial Design for MIT xPRO, speaks with Inside Higher Ed reporter Joshua Kim about his academic and professional journey in the field of online learning design. “Through all of my seldom successes and many, many failures, I learned a thing or two along the way, and I decided to start sharing these stories online,” says Hobson. “It began with answering questions in Facebook groups, which eventually turned into a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a book and more. What I discovered through sharing these moments is that I developed a love for teaching about instructional design.”
Yuly Fuentes-Medel of the MIT Climate Project speaks with Fast Company reporter Elizabeth Segran about how encouraging collaboration between shoe manufacturers could help increase shoe recycling. “The shoe industry is competitive, and these brands are rivals,” says Fuentes-Medel. “But by sharing costs, data, and infrastructure, they can achieve the sustainability goals that have eluded them for years.”
Prof. Laura Lewis speaks with New Scientist reporter Grace Wade about the importance of sleep research. Lewis notes that understanding the dynamics of how the brain transitions into sleep could help lead to new treatments for insomnia. “With sleep onset, it has been really difficult for us to find that moment,” says Lewis, where brain mechanisms drive the transition to sleep. “If we knew when that was, then we could start to say, what is the brain region or circuit that is making somebody fall asleep?”
Prof. Emeritus Tim Berners-Lee speaks with The Verge’s Decoder host Nilay Patel about his hopes and concerns for the future of the world wide web. “In the early days of the web, anybody used to be able to make a website,” explains Lee. “That feeling of sovereignty as an individual being enabled and being a peer with all of the other people on the web, that is what were still fighting for and what we need to rebuild.”
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Boston 25 reporter Amal Elhewl about the anticipated rise in healthcare premiums. Gruber predicts “prices could jump by as much as $25,000 a year for people like small business owners or entrepreneurs,” Elhewl explains. “If 4 to 5 million people lose health insurance, we’re talking about on the order of 5,000 extra deaths every year because we have not extended these subsidies,” adds Gruber.
Researchers at MIT have discovered “the most direct evidence to date of unconventional superconductivity in ‘magic-angel’ twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG), reports Aman Tripathi for Interesting Engineering. “This finding is a crucial step in the global search for room-temperature superconductors, often referred to as the ‘Holy Grail’ of physics,” writes Tripathi.
CNBC reporter Natalie Wu spotlights Sonia Raman, longtime MIT women’s basketball coach, who has recently been named the next head coach for the WNBA’s Seattle Storm. On her time at MIT, Raman says: “I felt like I was betting on myself, investing in my own growth and my own passion for what I really wanted to do. I also just felt like I was impacting people’s lives in a way that was much more fulfilling to me than anything I had done before.”
Prof. Tess Smidt and incoming Prof. Lindsey Raymond have been named Schmidt Sciences 2025 AI2050 Early Career Fellows, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. The AI2050 project is “aimed at advancing the capacity of artificial intelligence to tackle an evolving list of 10 ‘hard problems,’ involving major scientific questions, technical issues, and risks associated with revolutionary technology,” explains Nietzel.
MIT researchers have developed a “printable aluminum alloy that can withstand high temperatures and is five times stronger than traditionally manufactured aluminum,” reports Andrew Corselli for Tech Briefs. “The researchers envision that the new printable aluminum could be made into stronger, more lightweight and temperature-resistant products, such as fan blades in jet engines,” Corselli explains.
Sonia Raman, who served as the MIT women’s basketball coach for 12 seasons, has been named the next coach of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, reports Andrew Destin for the Associated Press. During her career at MIT, Raman “led the school to the Division III NCAA Tournament twice and remains the winningest coach in program history,” writes Destin.
In honor of the 25th anniversary of the International Space Station (ISS), Earth.com reporter Derek Davis spotlights the contributions of a number of MIT-trained astronauts and engineers, who played pivotal roles in the ISS’ history.
Prof. Linda Griffith speaks with Science Friday host Flora Lichtman about her work studying endometriosis. “I did a lot of things in the regenerative medicine space. But I had an epiphany that there’s so many chronic and inflammatory disease that we don’t know how to treat so I started building models of human organs and tissues in the lab using what we called microfluidic chips,” Griffith explains. “When I got asked about endometriosis, it was actually a perfect application for this kind of approach because we really need to study the lesions very carefully in the lab in ways that is very hard to study in patients.”
A new study from researchers at MIT shows that lack of focus after a poor night’s sleep often corresponds with a surge of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, which usually flows while we’re asleep. “We like to think we’re in control—that willpower, caffeine, and determination can overcome a missed night of sleep,” writes Bill Murphy Jr. for Inc. “However, this research suggests otherwise. When your brain needs to clean itself, it’s going to find a way to do it, whether you’re ready for it or not.”
In her forthcoming book, “Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us,” MIT Research Scientist and science photographer Felice Frankel encourages readers to search for science everywhere, while highlighting the beauty of science. The photographs “challenge readers to deduce the underlying chemical, natural, or physical processes at play.”