Symmetry Magazine reporter Stephanie Melchor spotlights the work of Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr. ’73, PhD ’77, a theoretical physicist “committed to ensuring young people have access to educational resources.” Melchor notes that during his time at MIT, Gates “started a tutoring program for MIT students called the Black Student Union Tutorial Program. He says it was during this tutoring that he realized he loved teaching.”
The Tyee reporter Andrew Nikiforuk spotlights research conducted by Alex Siegenfeld SB ‘15, PhD ‘22, Yaneer Bar-Yam SB ’78, PhD ’84, and their colleagues to better understand the hesitancy behind accepting the efficacy of mask wearing. “There weren’t any studies that conclusively showed masks were not effective, yet common sense just got undervalued,” says Siegenfeld.
Yuanming Hu SM’19, PhD ’21 and Ye Kuang co-founded startup Taichi Graphics, a cloud-based platform which aims to make 3D content creation easier to develop, share and collaborate on, reports Rita Liao for TechCrunch. “Undergirding the platform is its open-source programming language Taichi, which offers a high-performance computation on spatially sparse data structures like those from 3D visual graphics,” writes Liao.
WHDH spotlights MIT scientists who have created a new material as strong as steel and as light as plastic. “There is excitement because that may open up whole new classes of materials that are strong in new kinds of ways,” says Prof. Michael Strano.
MIT scientists have created a new strong yet light material that could be mass produced and used as coatings for cars, phones or even as building material for bridges, reports CBS Boston. “We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” says Prof. Michael Strano.
Researchers from MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have developed a theoretical, high-performance transaction processor for a Central Bank Digital Currency using open-source software, reports Jason Brett for Forbes. "What is clear is that open-source software provides an important way to collaborate, experiment, and implement,” says Neha Narula, director of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative. “In addition to supporting collaboration, monetary systems benefit from transparency and verifiability, which open-source offers."
Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson writes that MIT researchers have developed a new type of material that is two times stronger than steel with just one-sixth the material bulk. “The material has implications for everything from how we build the gadgets we hold in our hands to the buildings we live in,” writes Wilson.
MIT researchers have developed a new material that is as strong a steel but as light as plastic, reports Michelle Shen for USA Today. “It can be easily manufactured in large quantities, and the use cases range from lightweight coatings for cars and phones to building blocks for massive structures such as bridges,” writes Shen.
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with Tom Metcalfe of NBC News about the Venus Life Finder missions, which will carry a robotic space payload partially funded by MIT alumni to Venus to search for signs of life in the planet's atmosphere. “Space is becoming cheaper in general, and there is more access to space than ever before,” says Seager.
Bloomberg reporter Janet Wu speaks with Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine. Rae explains that The Engine backs “those types of founders that are on a mission to do something that will be truly impactful in a positive way to the planet."
Boston Globe Magazine reporter Courtney Humphries spotlights MIT startup Biobot Analytics, co-founded by Mariana Matus ’18 and Newsha Ghaeli ’17, for using their wastewater and sewage tracking technology to identify Covid -19 in communities across the United States. “Because people shed the virus in their stool before they test positive, Biobot’s data are often a leading indicator of where the infection is heading, arriving ahead of case counts by a few days,” writes Humphries.
New York Times reporter Gina Bellafante spotlights a report from the Sloan School of Management which found that toxic work culture leads to a higher attrition rate than unsatisfactory pay. “Attrition rates in the financial sector hovered around 9 and 10 percent, several points higher than those for the health care and telecommunications industries and nearly twice as high as the figure for the airlines,” writes Bellafante.
Researchers from MIT and Princeton University have found that flooding events will become much more common by the end of the century, especially in New England, reports Evan Bush for NBC. “The researchers used computer modeling to stimulate thousands of ‘synthetic’ hurricanes toward the end of this century and in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions are very high,” writes Bush.
MIT researchers have found a way to use wastewater testing surveillance as a public health tool to identify infectious diseases, reports Marie Szaniszlo for the Boston Herald. “Wastewater testing first started with a discovery by MIT researchers is being used nationwide as an early warning sign,” writes Szaniszlo.
Boston Business Journal executive editor Doug Banks highlights new research from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in developing two sets of computing source code for a hypothetical Central Bank Digital Currency. The researchers “selected concepts from cryptography, distributed systems, and blockchain technology to build and test platforms that would give policymakers substantial flexibility in the potential creation of a CBDC,” writes Banks.