In the Media

The Boston Globe profiles Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia and the new low-cost urine test she developed to detect cancer, as well as her work applying engineering techniques to medicine.

The Daily Beast reporter Mike Miesen looks at Sanergy, a company founded by MIT students that manufactures and distributes toilets designed for urban environments with poor sewage infrastructure. The model could improve sanitation in dense urban areas without adequate waste removal.

Lisa Mickey of The New York Times profiles retired professor Leon S. White, who researches poetry inspired by golf. In 2011 White published “Golf Course of Rhymes: Links between Golf and Poetry throughout the Ages,” a collection of golf poems he compiled from around the world.

Robin Young of NPR’s Here & Now interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Institute Professor John Harbison on his work “Songs America Loves To Sing – Old and New Music for Winds, Strings, and Piano,” in which he applies unique progressions and arrangements to well-known, classic songs.

The Economist describes how the Atlantic Razor clam’s digging capabilities inspired Professor Amos Winter to develop a new robot that can dig 20 centimeters into the sea floor in just 20 seconds.

Financial Times reporter Clive Cookson highlights the work of MIT researchers in identifying a new culprit for the Earth’s largest mass extinction. While volcanic activity did contribute to the extinction, Cookson reports, MIT researchers found the main cause was methane-producing microbes.

Professor Alan Guth discusses new research that supports his 1980 theory of cosmic inflation with John Lauerman of Bloomberg News.

Professor Jeffrey Harris discusses his research on tobacco-control policies in Uruguay during a Freakonomics Radio podcast. Harris argues that Uruguay’s use of severe warnings and graphic imagery on cigarette packaging has made the country “a pioneer” in smoking cessation.

John Daly writes about new research from MIT that shows organic materials could be used to conduct electricity and emit different colors of light. The research could have major implications for the development of photovoltaic cells and solar energy

Ryan Grenoble writes for The Huffington Post about Altaeros Energies, a wind energy company founded at MIT.  The company is poised to break the record for highest wind turbine ever, with plans to float an electric-generating device 1,000 feet above a site in Alaska.

The Huffington Post reports on new research from MIT that indicates microbes may have been responsible for Earth’s largest mass extinction. The “Great Dying,” which took place 252 million years ago, wiped out 90 percent of all species.

In a Bloomberg TV appearance, Professor Fiona Murray explains her latest research that shows how the gender gap plays into venture capital funding. Murray also discusses ways to encourage females to pursue careers in science and technology.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, spotlights Professor Alice Ting and her work developing a new technique that can, “produce a detailed molecular fingerprint of every compartment of a cell.”

Dr. Joshua Hartshorne of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences explores new work by Professor Joshua Tenenbaum and his colleagues that suggests the way humans make predictions about the physical world is similar to how scenarios are tested in computer simulations.

“Most inflationary models, almost all, predict that inflation should become eternal,” said Professor Alan Guth in an article published by Salon. New research has found evidence to support the theory of inflation, which Guth hypothesized in 1980.