In the Media

Alumnus Tom Leighton, CEO and co-founder of Akamai, speaks with Forbes contributor Peter High about the company’s founding and his push towards making the company more focused on cybersecurity.

MIT researchers have developed a new particle robotics system inspired by biological cells that can transport objects placed in their midst and squeeze through small gaps, reports Kaveh Waddell for Axios. “The particle robotics system is a departure from traditional robots, where a part failure generally breaks the entire thing,” Waddell explains.

Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero speaks with Gizmodo reporter Ryan Mandelbaum about his work showing that when twisted to the right angle, graphene can serve as an insulator or semiconductor. “This sort of field of ‘twistronics’ is something with great potential in terms of scientific discovery and intellectual interest,” Jarillo-Herrero explains.

A study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that a movie and texting campaign effectively encouraged people in Nigeria to report corruption, reports Yomi Kazeen for Quartz. “Given the popularity of the local movie industry and the prevalence of corruption in Nigeria,” writes Kazeen, “the researchers looked to study how Nigerians report corruption using high-profile actors to model behavior.”

Axios reporter Kaveh Waddell writes about a new study by MIT researchers that examines the potential impact of adversarial attacks on health care systems. “If someone sending in data for analysis has a different goal than the owner of the system doing the analysis, there's a potential for funny business,” Waddell explains.

MIT researchers have found that medical systems could be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, report Cade Matz and Craig Smith for The New York Times. AI systems could exacerbate the threat of “stakeholders bilking the system by subtly changing billing codes and other data in computer systems that track health care visits,” write Metz and Smith.

STAT reporter Sharon Begley spotlights the 10 bioscience images selected to be exhibited in the Koch Institute’s public galleries this year. The images “offer a peek into the living world as few have ever seen it,” writes Begley.

Writing for The Boston Globe Magazine, Andrew Nemethy chronicles the work of Prof. Maria Telkes, who was known as the “Sun Queen” and developed the first habitable building heated by the sun. Nemethy writes that “almost everything she did broke ground. As a prominent and outspoken female scientist, she defied stereotypes.”

Boston Globe reporters Ysabelle Kempe and Felice Freyer write that MIT is launching a new Down syndrome research center with a gift from the Alana Foundation. “I really want people with different conditions and different ability to feel they are not different, to feel that they belong, and to enhance their capability to interact and to enjoy life,” explains Prof. Li-Huei Tsai.

MIT is launching a new Down syndrome research center thanks to a gift from the Alana Foundation, reports the AP. The center “will combine the expertise of scientists and engineers in an effort to increase understanding of the biology and neuroscience of Down syndrome.”

New York Times reporter Heather Murphy highlights a new study co-authored by Prof. Peter Reddien that details the master gene responsible for enabling worms to regenerate. “Something has to decide in cells which notes to play; which genes to turn on,” explains Reddien. “There are some genes whose function it is to tell other genes whether to be on or off. This is one of those kinds of genes.”

Fast Company reporter Katherine Schwab spotlights Duality, an MIT startup that is using homomorphic encryption to analyze encrypted data without decrypting it. Schwab explains that the “company’s technology could provide an actual solution to the data privacy problem by allowing companies to keep their data fully encrypted and still find patterns in it.”

Inside Higher Ed reporter Lindsay McKenzie writes that MIT’s Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access has released a draft set of recommendations aimed at increasing the open sharing of MIT publications, data, software, and educational materials.

Axios reporter Kaveh Waddell writes that a group of economists led by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson has proposed creating a new metric to measure GDP that accounts for the value of free digital goods and new technologies. The researchers estimate that “hidden benefits from Facebook alone have added 0.05–0.11 percentage points to GDP every year since its 2004 launch,” Waddell explains.

In an article for The Boston Globe about how the city of Cambridge is trying to bring ad-hoc art galleries into empty commercial spaces, Max Reyes highlights Spaceus, a startup founded by two MIT alumna that transforms unused shops into galleries and studio space for artists. “People are stoked that these spaces are no longer empty,” explains MIT graduate and Spaceus co-founder Stephanie Lee.