In the Media

MIT has been named to Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings of the top schools in the Northeast for academic resources, reports Gerard Yates for The Wall Street Journal.

Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, speaks with DesignBoom about the 2021 Venice Architecture Bienale, which was postponed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The postponement led to open discussions among the participants about tactical things, thematic things, but also how do we respond collectively to a crisis like this?,” says Sarkis. “But then it also led to starting to share ideas about how it is more effective to ship from this port versus that, and using local support rather than shipping everything.”

A new study by MIT researchers finds that air pollution can enhance lightning sparked by wildfires, reports Nikk Ogasa for Science.  Ogasa notes that the researchers “also found that air pollution did more than enhance lightning; wildfire smoke more than tripled the intensity of thundershowers.”

Fast Company reporter Elizabeth Segran writes that a new study by MIT Prof. Jackson Lu finds that mask wearing is more prevalent in communities in the U.S. with higher levels of collectivism. “It’s important to understand how culture fundamentally shapes how people respond not only to this pandemic, but to future crises as well,” says Lu.

A new study co-authored by MIT Prof. Jackson Lu finds that a community’s level of collectivism influences whether someone is willing to wear a mask, reports Cara Murez for U.S. News & World Report. “The role of collectivism could be studied in other crises, such as wildfires or hurricanes,” notes Murez, adding that the researchers “felt it would be important to study whether the pandemic itself has affected the sense of collectivism or individualism.”

Prof. Christopher Capozzola speaks with Bob DeCastro of Good Day LA about the campaign to name a U.S. Navy Warship after Fireman 2nd Class Telesforo Trinidad, the only American national of Asian and Filipino descent to have received a Congressional Medal of Honor. “I think in some ways, there’s no better tribute to the century of work that Filipinos sailors did to keep the ship going than to name one of our ships after one of the most heroic Filipino sailors that we know,” says Capozzola.

In an interview with Clare Wilson of New Scientist, Prof. Ed Boyden, one of the co-inventors of the field of optogenetics, discusses how the technique was used to help partially restore vision for a blind patient. “It’s exciting to see the first publication on human optogenetics,” says Boyden.

Prof. Ed Boyden speaks with New York Times reporter Carl Zimmer about how scientists were able to partially restore a patient’s vision using optogenetics. “So far, I’ve thought of optogenetics as a tool for scientists primarily, since it’s being used by thousands of people to study the brain,” says Boyden, who helped pioneer the field of optogenetics. “But if optogenetics proves itself in the clinic, that would be extremely exciting.”

A new study co-authored by Professor Scott Stern finds that stimulus measures enacted during the pandemic may have contributed to a surge in start-ups in America, particularly in Black neighborhoods, reports Quoctrung Bui for The New York Times. “The idea that the pandemic has kind of restarted America’s start-up engine is a real thing,” says Stern. “Sometimes you need to turn off the car in order to turn it back on.”

AP reporter Colleen Barry explores how this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale examines how architecture can address global issues. “More than ever before, architecture is present in our lives, and in our thinking,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and curator of this year’s biennale.

Prof. Troy Littleton and graduate student Karen Cunningham speak with 7 News about how Littleton placed a crib in his lab for Cunningham’s young daughter to help create a safe place for her if she needs to accompany her mother to work. Cunningham says Littleton “has a long history of supporting parents and just generally has a history of supporting parents in the lab with whatever their needs are.”

Krishna Rajagopal, dean of Digital Learning, speaks with Julia Brodsky of Forbes about the history, educational philosophy and future of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) as the platform celebrates its 20^th anniversary. “OCW is one of the jewels of MIT, fully embodying its spirit of openness and its mission to unlock knowledge and empower minds,” says Rajagopal.

UPI reporter Brian P. Dunleavy writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that business closures and stay-at-home orders intended to stop the spread of Covid-19 helped reduce deaths caused by air pollution by an estimated 95,000 globally in 2020. “The air pollution declines that we calculated are primarily due to reduced economic activity during the COVID-19 lockdown,” writes Dunleavy.

Fast Company reporter Arianne Cohen writes that a new study by MIT researchers explores how polite corrections to online misinformation can lead to further sharing of incorrect information. The researchers found that after being politely corrected for sharing inaccurate information, “tweeters’ accuracy declined further—and even more so when they were corrected by someone matching their political leanings.”

New York Times reporter Sam Lubell spotlights how Hashim Sarkis, dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, addressed the theme of how we live together through this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. “We now have a different set of eyes for how we see the world because of the pandemic,” says Sarkis. “But the issues are still the same. The pandemic helped bring them into focus and accelerate the kinds of responses we had been reluctant to make.”