Austin Hess of The Tech speaks with MIT alumna and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith following her selection as the 2015 commencement speaker. “The students graduating today are going to live … possibly past 100 years. So there’s so many different adventures that people should get up to,” says Smith.
MIT engineers are developing a paper test that can identify Ebola, writes BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman. Prof. Lee Gehrke’s goal is to develop a “cheap, disposable front-line detector for this disease that many people can get their hands on — and fast,” Subbaraman reports.
Professor Jim Walsh discusses the U.S. hostage policy with Jeremy Hobson of WBUR’s Here and Now following the failed rescue attempt of American hostage Luke Somers in Yemen. “[T]he number of kidnappings has jumped dramatically,” says Walsh. “A lot of this is fundraising on the part of local terrorist groups.”
A team of scientists, including MIT Professor Roger Summons, has uncovered new evidence that there was water on Mars during portions of the planet’s history, writes New York Times reporter Marc Kaufman. According to Prof. Summons, for the planet’s first billion years Mars had a stable environment that could support life.
Business Insider highlights the work of 14 MIT students. “MIT is known for its top notch engineering and computer science programs, and some of these students are certainly breaking ground in these areas, but others are dancers, firefighters, and Olympic archers.”
Russell Platt writes for The New Yorker about Professor Keeril Makan’s music. “The work’s brave exploration of expressive territory makes it memorable. It’s lulling, thrilling, and, at times, downright eerie,” writes Platt of Makan’s piece “Resonance Alloy.”
Dr. Tara Swart speaks with Charlotte Clarke of The Financial Times about her work and what inspired her to switch from working in medicine to business. “My mission is to disseminate simple, pragmatic neuroscience-based messages that change the way people work and that translate to tangible financial improvements in business,” says Swart of her work.
Wall Street Journal reporter Chris Gay profiles several books examining the financial crisis, highlighting Prof. Simon Johnson’s book “13 Bankers.” In the book Johnson and his co-author, “trace two centuries of government attempts to grapple with the power of big finance,” Gay writes.
Boston Herald reporter Jordan Graham writes about a new report examining innovation at MIT. Graham writes that the study’s authors recommended “a co-working space for recent MIT graduates, the construction of two “Innovation Hubs” on campus, and the creation of the Laboratory for Innovation Science and Policy, a department that would study the innovation process and how to foster it.”
Lauren Landry of BostInno highlights a new report that examines innovation and entrepreneurship at MIT and presents suggestions for how to “bolster innovation.” Landry writes that “among the measures suggested are the creation of an undergraduate minor, a graduate certificate in innovation and programming for postdocs.”
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) has been named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s list of The 85 Most Disruptive Ideas in Our History. Bloomberg’s Mark Littman explains that J-PAL has “changed the way economists approach development issues.”
MIT engineers have examined the feasibility of the Mars One colonization plans and found that new technologies will be necessary for human survival on Mars, writes Lucy Draper for Newsweek. “[W]e do think it’s not really feasible under the assumptions they’ve made,” says Professor Oliver De Weck.
Carolyn Johnson of The Boston Globe reports on Prof. Benjamin Weiss’ research examining evidence that the moon had a magnetic field. Johnson writes that analysis of moon rocks has shown that the moon "had a magnetic field caused by an ancient core dynamo.”
Science reporter John Bohannon spotlights Professor Paula Hammond’s chemical engineering lab at MIT and the career paths of her graduate students. Hammond explains that she decided to pursue a career in academia as she “wanted the freedom to pursue my own research,” she explains.
Kristi Hedges writes for Forbes about Professor Sherry Turkle’s research that indicates that technology may be having an adverse effect on our connections to one another. Hedges writes that Turkle’s research suggests that “we’re creating a culture where we prefer an artificial presentation of ourselves through social media and texting."