President L. Rafael Reif spoke with Boston Magazine’s Chris Sweeney about the value of investing in science, issues facing higher education, exciting MIT research, and more. “I never imagined that I could end up in this place—and now we are creating digital education tools so that people like me, who are in Venezuela right now, can directly access an MIT professor’s course.”
Mike Wankum from WCVB visits Prof. Evelyn Wang in her lab to learn about a device that can extract water from the air in dry climates. To test the device, the research team will put “a water harvester on the roof of a building at the University of Arizona,” explains Wankum.
Writing for Wired, Prof. Ethan Zuckerman and Chelsea Barabas and Neha Narula of the Digital Currency Initiative address the difficulties in creating decentralized social media networks. “If users have more control of their data, including the right to export and reuse content they’ve created and friends they follow, they’ll be more willing to experiment with new platforms,” the researchers suggest.
In an article and accompanying puzzle they developed for The Boston Globe, Aloni Cohen, Sunoo Park, and Adam Sealfon of MIT’s Cryptography and Information Security group write about how bar and QR codes contain hidden messages. Cohen, Park and Sealfon note that the encoding scheme used in these codes, “allows not only error detection, but also error correction.”
In an article for Popular Science, Kate Baggaley highlights Prof. Markus Buehler’s work developing materials that mimic a conch shell’s armor. “The actual material doesn’t matter—it’s the way the material is built together in forming these architectures,” explains Buehler.
Popular Science reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis writes about Prof. Kerry Emanuel’s research showing that climate change could make it harder to predict the intensity of hurricanes. “Storm intensity matters, because a weak storm might just mean staying home for the day, while a strong storm may require evacuation,” Pierre-Louis explains.
In an article for Forbes, Amy Castor writes that researchers from MIT and BU have uncovered critical security flaws in IOTA, a cryptocurrency. “When we took a look at their system, we found a serious vulnerability and textbook insecure code,” explains Neha Narula, director of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative.
WBUR’s Zeninjor Enwemeka reports that MIT has been named one of the top schools in the country for entrepreneurs. Enwemeka notes that, “for undergraduate schools that produce venture-backed entrepreneurs, MIT ranks third with 907 entrepreneurs and $16.1 billion raised.”
IBM is joining forces with MIT to establish a new lab dedicated to fundamental AI research, reports the AP. The new lab will focus on, “advancing the hardware, software and algorithms used for artificial intelligence. It also will tackle some of the economic and ethical implications of intelligent machines and look at its commercial application.”
IBM has invested $240 million to develop a new AI research lab with MIT, reports Jing Cao for Bloomberg News. “The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab will fund projects in four broad areas, including creating better hardware to handle complex computations and figuring out applications of AI in specific industries,” Cao explains.
CNBC reporter Jordan Novet writes that MIT and IBM have established a new lab to pursue fundamental AI research. Novet notes that MIT, “was home to one of the first AI labs and continues to be well regarded as a place to do work in the sector.”
Boston Globe reporter Andy Rosen writes that MIT and IBM have established a new AI research lab. “It’s amazing that we have a company that’s also interested in the fundamental research,” explains Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering. “That’s very basic research that may not be in a product next year, but provides very important insights.”
Writing for Fortune, Barb Darrow highlights how IBM has committed $240 million to establish a new joint AI lab with MIT. Darrow explains that, “the resulting MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab will focus on a handful of key AI areas including the development of new 'deep learning' algorithms.”
In an article for The Boston Globe about the Boston school system’s new dual-language program in Haitian Creole, James Vaznis speaks with Prof. Michel DeGraff, who is assisting Boston with the program. DeGraff says that the program provides Boston with an opportunity to, “produce new material in Haitian Creole that in time can become models for programs in Haiti.”
Miro Kazakoff and Kara Blackburn, lecturers in the Sloan School of Management, have surveyed incoming MBA students for a glimpse at future workplace communication trends, reports Sophia Eppolito for The Boston Globe. “What we wanted to do in creating the survey was to get a sense of people who are just coming out of the workplace right now and seeking further training,” Kazakoff explains.