In the Media

Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was honored for his work "developing a device that uses gravity to detect intergalactic events, like black holes colliding, and who helped confirm two central hypotheses about the universe,” has died at 92, reports Dylan Loeb McClain for The New York Times. In an earlier interview, Weiss reflected upon the wonder unlocked by LIGO: “With gravitational waves, you have a new way to look at [the] universe. You can see all that nature has in store. So now comes the question: What do you want to find out?”

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti makes the case that “in a hotter world, trees should be considered more than decoration. This ancient infrastructure can cool not just our buildings but the cities themselves. And with AI, we can now plant better, with precision urban forestry. In a warming world, the smartest climate tech may be rooted in the ground — and it doesn’t strain the power grid.”

Provost Anantha Chandrakasan speaks with Lavina Melwani of The Week about how his mother’s work ethic and energy helped inspired his career, how his formative experiences in education showed him the importance of persistence, and his goals as provost of MIT. Chandrakasan notes that he hopes to enable MIT researchers to continue making “extraordinary contributions and impact, whether it is in scholarship, educational innovation or entrepreneurship. My role is to promote excellence in academics, research and entrepreneurship, and I would like to deliver on the promise of enabling excellence.”

Graduate student Alex Kachkine speaks with New York Times reporter Ephrat Livni about his work creating a new AI technique for restoring paintings, and how his research on microchips helped inspire the development. Microchips “require very high degrees of precision,” Kachkine explains. “And it turns out a lot of the techniques we use to achieve that level of precision are applicable to art restoration.” Kachkine adds that he hopes conservators will be able to “leverage the benefits” of the techniques he gleaned from engineering to preserve “really valuable cultural heritage.”

Noman Bashir, a fellow with MIT's Climate and Sustainability Consortium, speaks with AP reporter Caleigh Wells about how new AI data centers are impacting the country’s energy grid. “Since we are trying to build data centers at a pace where we cannot integrate more renewable energy resources into the grid, most of the new data centers are being powered by fossil fuels,” says Bashir. 

Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL and “one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of machines and artificial intelligence,” shares her views on the promise of embodied intelligence, which would allow machines to adapt in real-time; the development of AI agents; and how the US can lead on the development of AI technologies with Aaron Mak of Politico. “The U.S. government has invested in energy grids, railroads and the internet. In the AI age, it must treat high-performance compute, data stewardship and model evaluation pipelines as public infrastructure as well,” Rus explains. 

In an Opinion for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti explains how trees can help cool our cities. “[I]n a hotter world, trees should be considered more than decoration. This ancient infrastructure can cool not just our buildings but the cities themselves,” writes Ratti. “And with AI, we can now plant better, with precision urban forestry. In a warming world, the smartest climate tech may be rooted in the ground — and it doesn’t strain the power grid.” 

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with WBUR reporter Miriam Wasser about the decision to build a new natural gas pipeline in New England. "A new pipeline would allow more natural gas to reach us in periods when we really need it," says Knittel. "So that's where the big savings would be."

Beth Pollack, a research scientist in the Department of Biological Engineering, speaks with The Guardian’s Science Weekly hosts Madeleine Finaly and Ian Sample about her research on chronic fatigue syndrome (MF CFS) and other chronic illnesses. “There are a number of interesting treatments addressing the different aspects of immune disfunction with different immunomodulators,” says Pollack. 

Prof. John Hansman speaks with Newsweek reporter Anna Skinner about the logistics behind flying an aircraft through a hurricane. “Flying through a hurricane at altitude is not particularly hazardous, particularly if you are above the tops of the clouds and the turbulent layer,” explains Hansman. “It is more hazardous to land or take off in those conditions where there are high winds and rain." 

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Newsweek reporter Jasmine Laws about the impact of rising health insurance costs in California. "This is disastrous for both economic security and health,” says Gruber. “Studies have shown that losing insurance is associated with enormous economic risk and worse health, including death."

WBUR reporter Rachell Sanchez-Smith spotlights two health tech devices being developed by Prof. Yoel Fink and Prof. Canan Dağdeviren, respectively, that aim to “give the wearers — and their doctors — a clearer picture of their overall health.” Fink has created “a thread capable of storing data, running artificial intelligence algorithms, sensing motion and sound, and communication through Bluetooth,” while Dağdeviren’s wearable ultrasound scanner can be used to make breast cancer screening “more comfortable and more accurate,” explains Sanchez-Smith.  

Prof. Laura Lewis discusses her research exploring how the flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in your brain while you sleep can help eliminate “waste," like “excess proteins and other molecules that can be toxic, if not removed,” reports Lydia Denworth for Scientific American. “Lewis found that CSF also flows when people are awake but less effectively,” explains Denworth. “Lewis’s conclusion: sleep, a state that is essential for human health, has a distinct pattern of CSF flow—and that pattern changes as the stages of sleep shift.” 

Writing for The Guardian, Prof. Carlo Ratti highlights his work using “AI to compare footage of public spaces from the 1970s with recent video” from the same locations in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. “The findings are striking: people walk faster, linger less, and are less likely to meet up,” explains Ratti. “By using AI to study urban public spaces, we can gather data, pick out patterns and test new designs that could help us rethink, for our time, our modern versions of the agora– the market and main public gathering place of Athens.” 

In a new LinkedIn ranking, MIT has been named one of the best colleges for long-term career success “because of its place in the top 5 for entrepreneurship, C-suite experience (CEO, CFO, etc.), internships, and recruiter demand,” reports Madison Lucchesi for Boston.com.