Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear writes that a replica “Star Wars” X-wing Starfighter made an appearance in Lobby 7 on Monday. The replica was originally created for the annual 2.007 robot competition, during which students navigate robots that they designed and built themselves through a “Star Wars”-themed course.
New Scientist reporter Timothy Revell writes that a new study by Prof. Iyad Rahwan shows that automation will have a larger impact on jobs in smaller cities. Rahwan and his colleagues found that “towns and small cities have a smaller proportion of jobs that will be resilient to automation than larger urban centers.”
MIT graduate student Manisha Mohan has developed a device, called the Smell Camera, which can record specific scents, writes Antonia DePace for Boston Magazine. Mohan’s struggle with homesickness inspired her to create the Smell Camera, which allows users to capture and store the scent of a particular object.
Reporting for WBUR, Karen Weintraub speaks with Profs. Angela Belcher, Sangeeta Bhatia and Paula Hammond about their work developing tiny tools to target cancer cells. Bhatia explains that their collaboration feels like, “a dream team of people that are interested in nanoscience and nanotechnology and focusing those advances on cancer.”
The Sloan School of Management was honored in the Financial Times’ annual executive education rankings. Laurent Ortmans and Patricia Nilsson note that nearly half of the participants in Sloan’s executive education program “had an MBA, double the average for all ranked schools. Nearly two-thirds of students worked at partner level or higher compared with an average of 36 per cent.”
Xconomy reporter Ben Fidler writes about the life and legacy of Henri Termeer, a life member of the MIT Corporation who died at age 71. Institute Prof. Phillip Sharp explains that Termeer was, “a transformational leader in biotechnology of orphan diseases. Many children now have hope of a healthy life because of his vision and 40 years of creative business leadership.”
Henri Termeer, a life member of the MIT Corporation who was known as one of the founding fathers of the biotech industry, died at age 71, write Robert Weisman and Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Termeer was, “a key leader in the biotech revolution that placed Massachusetts at the nexus of cutting-edge research and development.”
Ben Guarino of The Washington Post revisits research by Profs. Annette Hosoi and Amos Winter examining how razor claims burrow through sand. Hosoi and Winter developed a device that “mimics the razor clam's digging ability, allowing an object to secure itself to the sea floor,” and could be used to anchor underwater autonomous vehicles or deposit undersea cables.
Researchers in the MIT Senseable City Lab have partnered with the City of Cambridge to gather information about air pollution, infrastructure decay, and traffic, writes Haniya Rae for CityLab. The researchers have outfitted five garbage trucks with “accelerometers, air-quality sensors, infrared cameras, and wireless signal monitors,” in an effort to “collect data on the state of the city.”
MIT’s annual Grand Hackathon returns with the goal of solving health care’s biggest challenges, writes Shelby Grebbin for The Boston Globe. This hackathon provides a different way for people to look at health care and helps participants “find elegant ways to streamline technology,” explains graduate student and event co-director, Khalil Ramadi.
BBC reporter Nic Fleming highlights research by Associate Prof. Themistoklis Sapsis in an article chronicling discoveries about rogue waves, which were once thought to be fake. "Instead of looking at individual waves and trying to solve their dynamics, we can use groups of waves and work out which ones will undergo instabilities," says Prof. Sapsis.
Researchers at CSAIL have developed a new system to train robots called C-LEARN, which imbues “a robot with a knowledge base of simple steps that it can intelligently apply when learning a new task,” writes Matthew Hutson for Science.
Prof. Regina Barzilay’s research group is working with MGH to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve cancer diagnoses, reports CNBC’s Meg Tirrell. The group also hopes to allow doctors to use “the huge quantities of data available on patients to make more personalized treatment decisions,” explains Tirrell.
Anthony Cuthbertson of Newsweek reports that PhD student Claudia Pérez D’Arpino has developed a system that allows robots to learn a skill and teach it to another robot. Armed with knowledge of how to perform a task, a 3-D interface demonstrates the tasks “allowing [the robot] to understand the motions it is being taught in the real world,” explains Cuthbertson.
WDEF-12 TV reporter Jordan spotlights Renee Schebler, a graduate of the STEM School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who plans to attend MIT this fall. Schebler developed a programmable bear for her senior business project and explains that “getting kids, especially girls, involved in STEM fields is a true passion of mine.”