Artist Pawel Romanczuk, who performed at MIT last week, has been working with MIT students to make instruments from different materials. Romanczuk explains to Boston Globe reporter Kevin Hartnett that his work is about “finding a new way for making music, searching for new sources of sound.”
Jack Newsham writes for The Boston Globe about the new gift from MIT alumnus Samuel Tak Lee to “fund the study of sustainable real estate development” through the creation of a new lab at MIT. The lab will have a focus on China, “a country where the real estate sector is rapidly changing.”
Justin Bachman writes for Bloomberg BusinessWeek about Prof. Dava Newman’s proposal for the skin-tight BioSuit, meant to replace today’s bulky spacesuits. BioSuit “shrinks onto the body, achieving pressurization not with gas but with a soft exoskeleton of heat-activated materials that shape to fit the traveler’s frame.”
A gift from alumnus Samuel Tak Lee will be used to establish a new MIT lab for sustainable real estate development, reports Chris Staiti of Bloomberg News. The gift will “help design a program that ties the study of real estate to 21st-century realities.”
BostInno reporter Lauren Landry writes that MIT has received one of the largest gifts in the school’s history from alumnus Samuel Tak Lee. The gift will be used to create a lab dedicated to socially responsible and sustainable real estate development, with a focus on China.
One of the largest gifts in MIT's history will be used to “advance socially responsible and sustainable real estate, with a focus on China,” the Associated Press reports. The gift, from alumnus Samuel Tak Lee, will be used to establish a lab for sustainable real estate development, fund student fellowships, and put the lab’s curriculum online.
Professor Fiona Murray, Associate Dean of Innovation, has received the Commander of the British Empire award from Queen Elizabeth, reports Mark Shanahan for The Boston Globe. “The honor is in recognition of Murray’s services to the United Kingdom in entrepreneurship and innovation,” writes Shanahan.
Kyle Vanhemert writes for Wired about a talk by graduate student Greg Borenstein on the future of camera technology. “The gist of Borenstein’s talk: Cheap cameras are getting better and better, and researchers are finding more and more to do with them,” writes Vanhemert.
John Hamilton reports for NPR on a new study by Prof. John Gabrieli that suggests information gathered from brain scans can help predict aspects of a person's future. Certain brain measures provide results that are often "better than currently available tests or clinical measures," Gabrieli explains.
Patrick J. Egan writes for The Washington Post about the racial diversity of police forces. In examining how politics may influence the makeup of a police force, Egan highlights a study co-authored by Prof. Chris Warshaw that found that municipal governments tend to adapt to voters’ views.
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye about the search for Earth-like planets. “We can count as many as we like,” Seager explains, “but until we can observe the atmospheres and assess their greenhouse gas power, we don’t really know what the surface temperatures are like."
Fusion reporter Ted Hesson writes about a new study, co-authored by MIT Professor Emilio Castilla, examining labor certifications for U.S. immigrants. The researchers found that “Asian and Canadian immigrants have a much better chance of being approved for a work visa than immigrants from Latin America.”
Forbes has released its annual “30 Under 30” section, which highlights game changers under the age of 30 from a wide variety of disciplines. This year’s list features a number of MIT students, alumni and research staff, as well as Professor Nikhil Agarwal.
Professors Joel Schindall and John Kassakian are developing technology designed to replace the traditional battery with a new device that relies on ultracapacitors, reports Erik Sherman for CBS News. Ultracapacitors “can store large amounts of electricity and release them in single bursts,” Sherman explains.
HubSpot founders and MIT alumni Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah speak with the Financial Times' Rebecca Knight about how their time at MIT helped lay the foundation for HubSpot’s success. “A lot of people ‘diss’ MBA programmes but HubSpot wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for MIT Sloan,” says Halligan.