Tech reporters Drew Bent and Katherine Nazemi speak with MIT President L. Rafael Reif about the MIT Campaign for a Better World. “We want to be as strong as we can, but for a purpose, and the purpose is to do something good for the world,” says Reif. “That’s very uniquely MIT.”
In a Boston Globe special section, Juan Enriquez and Kathryn Taylor describe how MIT has helped transform Kendall Square. “MIT now serves as a local and global example,” they write. “Policy makers, government types, university officials, and assorted entrepreneurs walk its hallways trying to figure out what makes it tick.”
Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Jeffrey Young speaks with MIT student Battushig Myanganbayar about how students taking MOOCs need greater opportunities to apply their education. President L. Rafael Reif explains that in addition to creating an entrepreneurship MOOC, MIT aims to “help the people who are learning with us learn how to think differently."
MIT has been named one of the most reputable universities in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, reports Karsten Strauss for Forbes.
Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear speaks with Prof. Amos Winter about this year’s 2.007 robot competition, during which student-built robots will compete on an American Revolution-themed course. “I think this is one of the most real-life engineering experiences the students can get,” says Winter.
MIT’s parade this Saturday "promises to be quite the sight" declares an article by Steve Annear in The Boston Globe. Annear explains that the parade across the Charles River “is part of the school’s ‘Moving Day at MIT’ extravaganza” to celebrate the school’s move from Boston to Cambridge 100 years ago, and touts the return of MIT alumnus Oliver Smoot to serve as grand marshal.
STAT reporter Damian Garde spotlights alumna Lita Nelson, who led MIT’s TLO for 23 years. Garde notes that Nelsen, “shattered the glass ceiling for women in tech transfer,” and Katharine Ku, head of Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing, adds that she has been “a beacon for the tech transfer community.”
The researchers involved with the successful detection of gravitational waves have been honored with a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, reports Joseph Ax for Reuters. "This is the first time we've seen the full force of Einstein's theory of gravity at work,” says Edward Witten, head of the selection committee.
New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye writes that the scientists of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration have been honored with a $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their work successfully detecting gravitational waves.
Mina Corpuz writes for The Boston Globe that the MBTA is releasing a new app, developed by MIT researchers, called QualiT that will provide passengers with an opportunity to anonymously rate their bus trips and give feedback. Corpuz explains that the app will, “allow riders to see their travel on a map and rate their trips after getting off the bus.”
In an article for Scientific American, Prof. César Hidalgo examines how to improve the design of and make open data websites more usable. “To make open data really open, we need to make it searchable, and for that we need to bring data to the surface of the web,” writes Hidalgo.
TIME reporter Jeffrey Kluger writes that researchers have discovered three potentially habitable planets. Kluger explains that the researchers observed the planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star “at a distance at which water—the must-have ingredient for life as we know it—could exist in liquid form.”
Dr. Julien de Wit speaks with Nell Greenfieldboyce of NPR about the three potentially habitable planets that he and his colleagues recently discovered. "These planets are Earth-sized, they are temperate — we can't rule out the fact that they are habitable — and they are well-suited for atmospheric studies," de Wit explains.
Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Netburn writes that researchers have discovered three potentially habitable planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star 40 light years away. "The team took a big risk even looking for planets around these stars," says MIT postdoc Julien de Wit, co-author of the paper. "But it has really paid off."
A team of astronomers, including researchers from MIT, have discovered three potentially habitable planets, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. Strickland writes that the “results are just the beginning of a study that will continue for years. The researchers are already working on observations to see if the planets have water or methane molecules.”