Nicole Obi MCP ’95, SM ’95, head of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, speaks with Boston Magazine reporter Jonathan Soroff about how Massachusetts can level the playing field for entrepreneurs. “We’re at this point of racial awakening, and a lot of people might not be comfortable with it, but they get it,” says Obi. “Being in this moment makes me really excited to be part of the solution and to create a more equitable future for Massachusetts.”
New York Times reporter Thomas May spotlights Prof. Tod Machover’s chamber opera “Overstory Overture,” based on Richard Powers’s novel “The Overstory.” May notes that Machover “has developed novel approaches to electronics and is a trailblazer in the applications of artificial intelligence to music.” Of his desire to create an operatic adaptation of Powers’s book, Machover explains, “I’ve always wanted to write a theatrical work with many strands that come together in an unusual way.”
Prof. Deborah Ancona speaks with Forbes reporter Tima Bansal about her research into X-teams, a specific type of team structure used in business environments.
Mashable visits CSAIL graduate student Gregory Xie to learn about his work with Auxbots, a system of untethered modular robots. “Together in a large assembly,” Xie explains, “we can get very interesting large scale motions of the assembly. These robots are more modular because they’re untethered and the actuation is completely electromechanical.”
Prof. Ritu Raman speaks with Scientific American about her work “building machines that we call bio-hybrid because they're part biological and part made out of synthetic materials. The biological robots that we're building are powered by muscle tissue so that every time the muscle contracts, you could get something that looks like movement.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti and Robert Muggah of the SecDev Group explore the pushback against 15-minute cities and how the concept behind creating more accessible neighborhoods could “facilitate the meaningful and sustained in-person connections that the internet cannot.” They note that "the concept could be the solution to bridging our divides. By creating more open, integrated, and healthy neighborhoods, it is possible to restore the in-person connections that are an antidote to polarization.”
New research by Prof. David Autor explores how the wage gap narrowed during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Justin Lahart for The Wall Street Journal. Lahart writes that the findings suggest that “even as the pandemic fades, competition for low-wage workers will be more intense than before the pandemic. That could lead to further reductions in income inequality, raise labor costs at firms that employ low-wage workers, and reshape the U.S. business landscape.”
Boston Globe reporters Maddie Browning and Abigail Lee highlight the “Women Take the Reel Film Festival,” an annual event that spotlights “women-directed films that grapple with social issues like gender or sexuality.” The festival is hosted by the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality at MIT, and each screening features a discussion and Q&A session.
In an article for Fast Company, Prof. Kate Kellogg and Prof. Erin Kelly, along with Boston University lecturer Constance Hadley, explore how employers can help encourage spontaneous interactions among employees. “By giving more attention to cultivating employee relationships and network ties at work, leaders can help create a hybrid workplace that offers the best of both worlds,” they write.
Stephen Bowen MS ’93 and Warren Hoburg BS ’08 have joined the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), reports Susannah Sudborough for Boston.com. During their six-month period aboard the ISS, which began on March 2, “they will conduct over 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations,” writes Sudborough.
Daily Beast reporter Meredith Bagby spotlights the life of Ron McNair PhD ’76 and his legacy as one of NASA’s first black astronauts. “Astronaut, saxophonist, and karate black belt Ron McNair overcame an impoverished childhood in segregated Lake City, South Carolina to earn a Ph.D. in physics from MIT and become one of NASA’s first Black astronauts,” writes Bagby. “Although Ron’s path to NASA was nearly derailed because of systematic racism and inequality, he found inspiration in the Black leaders around him and persevered.”
Writing for Fast Company, Visiting Scientist Priya Donti examines how “scientists are increasingly looking to AI to help us predict the weather, and some of the most promising approaches come from blending AI with existing scientific knowledge.” Donti notes that a “combination of innovative technology and human wisdom is the best way to harness AI to help us tackle the challenges of the future, especially climate change.”
Dean Daniel Huttenlocher joins CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” to discuss the current state of AI and how generative AI advances could impact our future. “These recent advances in generative AI technology really do represent a completely different capability in computing than anything we have experienced,” says Huttenlocher. “This is the first tech that can create humanlike expression.”
John Olver PhD ’61, “who never lost an election in the nearly 44 years he served as a state representative, state senator, and US representative,” has died at age 86, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “Dr. Olver was respected for his behind-the-scenes work crafting legislation and brokering compromises,” Marqaurd note.
A new report co-authored by MIT researchers finds that the “US lead in advanced computing has declined significantly over the past five years—especially when measured against China,” writes Will Knight for Wired. The report’s authors emphasize that the US “needs to make sure that the CHIPS Act spending reflects the importance of developing novel ideas in advanced computing, as opposed to just propping up existing technologies,” Knight notes.