STAT reporter Sharon Begley spotlights how President Emerita Susan Hockfield and Profs. Sangeeta Bhatia and Nancy Hopkins are tackling the gender imbalance in biotech. “Our working hypothesis is that engagement [on scientific advisory boards and boards of directors] can help increase the number” of women-founded biotechs,” Bhatia explains.
Fast Company reporter Arianne Cohen writes that a new study by Prof. Arnold Barnett finds flying today is much safer than it was in the past. Barnett examined flight safety from 2008 to 2017 and found that “globally, flying today is six times safer than 30 years ago, and 22 times safer than 50 years ago.”
ArtNet reporter Zachary Small writes that Christine Sun Kim, who has an upcoming exhibition at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, will deliver her American Sign Language rendition of the National Anthem during the Super Bowl.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Damian Garde spotlights how research universities like MIT help make it possible to bring new medical treatment from the lab to fruition and contribute to the thriving biotechnology sector in Cambridge and Boston.
Prof. Andrew Sutherland writes for The Conversation about his new research that demonstrates testing investment advisors on their knowledge of ethics often leads to better behavior. “Those who were tested more rigorously on questions of ethics ended up having fewer episodes of misconduct,” writes Sutherland. “They are also less likely to tolerate scandals at their firms.”
MIT is launching a new master’s in data, economics and development policy for which students can gain admissions based on their performance in online courses, reports Paul Basken for Times Higher Education. Basken notes that the goal of the program is to enable “students from around the world who have the ability and motivation to succeed but lack the traditional credentials for entry.”
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.