DUSP Prof. Anne Whiston Spirn and Prof. Neri Oxman of the Media Lab were among the ten winners of this year’s Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum awards, “also known as the Oscars of the design world,” writes Aileen Kwun for Co.Design. Spirn received the “Design Mind” honor, while Oxman was selected for “Interaction Design.”
Devra First, food writer for The Boston Globe, visits Spyce, the robot kitchen restaurant created by four MIT alumni. “When it comes to matters of taste, we (still) need people,” says First. “The Spyce inventors enlisted famed chef Daniel Boulud, who is culinary director of and an investor in the company.”
Yobe, a company co-founded by alumnus S. Hamid Nawab, uses a signal processing device to make it easier for machines to identify a specific voice in noise or among other voices. This technology has potential applications for “law enforcement, hearing aid manufacturers and meeting transcription services,” writes Ron Miller for TechCrunch.
Sloan Adjunct Associate Prof. Zeynep Ton is one of the “forward-thinking professors” to receive this year’s Ideas Worth Teaching Awards from the Aspen Institute, which “celebrate curricula that bring to life the promise of meaningful work in business,” reports Lila MacLellan for Quartz. Ton was recognized for teaching Management of Services: Concepts, Design, and Delivery.
Last year, the startup Learning Machine launched a program at Sloan and the Media Lab that placed important documents, like transcripts and diplomas, on the blockchain. Now, reports Danny Crichton for TechCrunch, the company is working with the Media Lab on an initiative called BlockCerts, “an open source and open standard securing credentials on the blockchain.”
CSAIL researchers have developed a system that uses LIDAR and GPS to allow self-driving cars to navigate rural roads without detailed maps, writes Tracey Lindeman of Motherboard. Autonomous ride-hailing or car-sharing is important in rural communities because “the carless in these areas have few transportation options; many small communities don’t even have public buses,” notes Lindeman.
In a commentary on CNBC, graduate student J. Daniel Kim and a co-author describe research with Prof. Pierre Azoulay and the U.S. Census Bureau on the average age of successful entrepreneurs. By working with the U.S. Census Bureau, they were able “to examine all businesses launched in the U.S. between 2007 and 2014, encompassing 2.7 million founders.”
In an article for Forbes, Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, discusses the results of a study on generational attitudes about the environment. While Millennials often believe their older peers committed “unforgivable environmental sins over past decades,” Coughlin argues the data also show that older adults “might just be the catalyst and be the best hope we have for a more sustainable society in the coming century.”
In an article for Salon, Associate Prof. Noelle Eckley Selin and postdoc Sae Yun Kwon discuss their latest research, which examined emissions in China. They write that although mercury pollution is often associated with fish consumption, “China’s future emissions trajectory can have a measurable influence on the country’s rice methylmercury” levels, as well.
Writing for The Atlantic, MIT lecturer Amy Carleton describes the focus on public policy, as well as engineering and product design, at this year’s “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck” hackathon. “What emerged [at the inaugural hackathon] was an awareness that the challenges surrounding breastfeeding were not just technical and equipment-based,” explains Carleton.
The Economist explores the basics of free trade, its benefits and downsides, with Prof. John Van Reenen. “With free trade, you come into more contact with foreign companies, new ideas, new people and so on,” explains Van Reenen. “That’s mutually beneficial. And it is a political force for cooperation.”
Eric Mack writes for Forbes about a new system from MIT researchers that uses GPS in conjunction with LIDAR and IMU sensors to power self-driving vehicle navigation. Graduate student Teddy Ort says the system “shows the potential of self-driving cars being able to actually handle roads beyond the small number that tech companies have mapped.”
In a Q&A with The Boston Globe’s Sarah Shemkus, Prof. Yossi Sheffi discusses his new book, Balancing Green, which examines “the challenges and benefits of ‘going green’ in a multilayered global economy.” Sheffi suggests green practices can be advantageous for companies because “certain things also cut costs and increase profit, like energy savings.”
Bucking conventional wisdom, research co-authored by Prof. Josh Tenenbaum shows that “picking up the subtleties of grammar in a a second language does not fade until well into the teens,” writes Dana G. Smith for Scientific American. “To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.”
MapLite, a new system developed by CSAIL, aims to help autonomous vehicles navigate uncharted areas, writes Jesus Diaz for Co.Design. “[I]f autonomous cars can reach the millions of people who live beyond the city and are unable to pilot their own vehicles,” said graduate student Teddy Ort, “they will be uniquely capable of providing mobility to those who have very few alternatives.”