Principal Research Scientist Jeanne Ross speaks with Peter High of Forbes about her new book and how companies can implement a successful digital transformation of their enterprises. “What is hard for companies is that you cannot simply pick a strategy and insist it will succeed,” says Ross. “Instead, you have to try a strategy and see if it will succeed. If it does not, companies have to pivot.”
MIT researchers have developed a system, called RoadTagger, that helps improve digital maps by automatically predicting what roads will look like behind obstructions, reports Courtney Linder for Popular Mechanics. RoadTagger is “able to guess how many lanes a given road has and whether it's a highway or residential road,” Linder explains.
MIT alumnus Michael Gruenbaum ‘53 recounts how due to his “mother’s persistence and a lot of luck,” he evaded being sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and survived the Holocaust. “It behooves all of us to be very much on the alert and make sure that the smallest of such incidents is immediately thwarted and stopped in its tracks,” writes Gruenbaum.
Media Lab research scientist Stephanie Nguyen writes for Fast Company about how a number of social-impact startups affiliated with MIT Solve are handling privacy laws and concerns. Nguyen notes that, “if we take cues from what smaller companies are doing, we can find inspiration to make data privacy less about compliance and more about building products that meet user expectations and contexts.”
Boston Globe reporter David Weininger spotlights Johnny Gandelsman’s upcoming performance at MIT of Bach’s Cello Suites on the violin. Weininger explores how the inspiration for Gandelsman’s reinvention of Bach’s Cello Suites was inspired by a concert he gave at MIT in 2015, during which he realized that “I wasn’t quite ready to stop working on Bach’s music.”
Quartz reporter Heather Landy spotlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s book, “The Narrow Corridor.” Landy notes that at the World Economic Forum, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called the book “fantastic,” adding that it examines “the real, constant tension between what does a society want and … what does the government want … and you have to find the narrow corridor.”
A new study by MIT researches examines how culture influences moral decision-making, reports Sigal Samuel for Vox. “The study shows that our beliefs about what’s moral are, at least to some degree, products of our cultural context,” writes Samuel. “But, intriguingly, the study also shows that there are some universals in human morality.”
New York Times reporter Jessica Bennett writes that a study by MIT researchers finds during the run-up to the 2016 election, Americans were reluctant to use the word “she” to describe a hypothetical president. “People had difficulties reading ‘she’ even if the text had previously used ‘she,’ showing how persistent and deeply ingrained this bias is,” explains Prof. Roger Levy.
Researchers from MIT and several other universities have developed an app, dubbed Carbin, that measures overall road quality and could be used to help reduce fuel emissions caused by poor roads, reports Mark Gardiner for The New York Times. The app could eventually “offer eco-routing for your particular car,” Prof. Franz-Josef Ulm explains.
Dr. Mallika Marshall reports for CBS Boston that a new light-sensitive hydrogel developed by MIT researchers could make some gastrointestinal treatments more convenient and safer for patients. The technique could potentially “be used with a whole host of devices, including ones that might deliver medications,” Marshall explains.
Prof. Asu Ozdaglar, head of EECS, speaks with John Thornhill of the Financial Times about the Schwarzman College of Computing and the complex challenges posed by new technologies. “The excitement around how these technologies can transform society is very real,” says Ozdaglar. “But we should also be aware of their possible negative consequences.”
WGBH’s Jared Bowen spotlights the MIT Museum’s exhibit exploring the history of Polaroid photography in a special segment for the PBS NewsHour. “It was a very small thing you could hold in the hand, but you had to participate in the making of the picture,” says William Ewing, one of the exhibit’s curators.
CNN reporter Kate Pisa spotlights Derq, a startup co-founded by MIT alumnus Georges Aoude that is aimed at improving road safety through the development of new technologies that can alert drivers to potential hazards.
Writing for the New York Times, Prof. Yasheng Huang argues that Chinese policies favoring the state sector over the private sector have played a bigger role in the country’s economic slowdown than the current trade war. “That the Chinese economy is slowing down isn’t necessarily a bad thing, at least not in itself,” says Huang. “But a slowdown is a problem if it’s the result of poor policy.”
Prof. Kate Brown speaks with Rachel Toor of The Chronicle of Higher Education about writing, delving into why she writes in the first person and her interest in “genre-busting” history. “Thinking about writing in the first person has inspired me to get up from my desk and out of the archive to explore the landscapes and communities that are the settings of my histories,” Brown explains.