IEEE Pulse reporter Leslie Mertz spotlights Prof. Ed Boyden’s work on refining expansion microscopy. “My hope for expansion, looking 5 or 10 years out, is that it could help produce a map of molecules that is detailed enough to help us understand life itself,” says Boyden.
Adjunct Professor Emeritus Melvin “Mel” King, a political activist, former MA state representative and the first Black person to reach a Boston mayoral general election, has died at 94. “[In 1971], he founded the Community Fellows Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became an adjunct professor of urban studies and planning. The program brings leaders from minority communities to MIT for a year of research and study,” writes Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe.
Venti Technologies, a startup co-founded by MIT professors and alumni that builds autonomous vehicles for industrial and logistics centers, has raised $29 million in Series A funding. The company’s “target customer comes from the wide range of supply chain businesses that operate across warehouses, ports and other shipping and logistics environments where vehicles — currently driven by humans — are central to operations,” writes Ingrid Lunden for TechCrunch.
Prof. Edward Flemming speaks with Boston.com reporter Ross Cristantiello about the origins of the Boston accent. Flemming says the “'softening' and eventual dropping of “R” sounds appears to have spread from the south of England through ports up and down the eastern coast of America, influencing the accents found in cities like Charleston and New York City.”
Prof. John Hart, co-founder of VulcanForms, speaks with Rana Foroohar at the Financial Times about the digital manufacturing company, which uses 3D printing with metals to create parts. “Everything we see around us, with the exception of ourselves and the food we grow, is manufactured,” says Hart. “Now, post-pandemic, several forces are aligning to reshape how we make things. We understand the need for agile supply chains. We realize how important production is for our economic and national security. And third, we need to decarbonize, which will require the growth of new manufacturing systems at scale.”
Graduate student Crystal Owens speaks with NPR correspondent Miles Parks about her study which sought to find out the perfect ratio for breaking apart an Oreo cookie. “What we actually found was that all of the results were basically the same,” says Owens. “You can’t do it wrong because there’s no way to do it right.”
Researchers from the MIT Media Lab and elsewhere “have created a database of certain media that has the potential to give you chills,” reports Hannah Docter-Loeb for Motherboard. “Although we know that chills stimulate brain regions associated with reward and emotion, there is still much we do not understand about the connection between the body and this powerful sensation and how the experience impacts our brain,” says graduate student Abhinandan Jain.
Prof. Simon Johnson writes for The Los Angeles Times about the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates despite the recent instability in the banking sector. “Increasing the deposit insurance cap and focusing on small-business transaction accounts could stabilize midsize banks, reduce more deposit transfers out of those institutions, and shore up confidence in the banking system,” writes Johnson.
Bob Metcalfe ’69, a CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, has been awarded this year’s Turing Award for his work inventing Ethernet, reports Randy Bean for Forbes. “Turing recipients include the greatest pioneers in the advancement of computer science,” says Metcalfe. “I am grateful to be considered among these giants.”
Milford High School student Elsie Sutherland created “Community Connector,” as her final project for MIT’s Leadership Training Institute, reports Lisa Hughes for CBS. The website “connects people who want to volunteer with organizations that need help,” explains Hughes. “Each listing includes a description of the non-profit, its event, the nature of the service project and a sign-up.”
Prof. Emeritus Marcia Bartusiak speaks with GBH co-hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel about her four decades of experience as a science communicator covering the fields of astronomy and physics. “That’s the role of a science writer, is to take those, what seemed to be difficult ideas and, through metaphors and analogies, show how it affects your everyday life, or explain them with examples that they would be familiar with from their everyday life,” says Bartusiak.
This year's Turing Award has been awarded to Bob Metcalfe ’69, a CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, for his work inventing Ethernet, a computer networking technology that for decades “has connected PCs to servers, printers and the internet in corporate offices and homes across the globe,” writes Cade Metz for The New York Times. “Almost everything you do online goes through Ethernet at some stage,” said Marc Weber of the Computer History Museum.
Bob Metcalfe ’69, a CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, has been honored as this year’s recipient of the Turing Award for the invention of the Ethernet, “a technology that half a century after its creation remains the foundation of the internet,” reports Stephen Nellis for Reuters. “The Ethernet got its start when Metcalfe, who later went on to co-found computing network equipment maker 3Com, was asked to hook up the office printer,” writes Nellis.
CSAIL research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus Bob Metacalfe ‘69 has been awarded the 2022 Turing Award for his contributions to creating Ethernet, a method for enabling personal computers to communicate directly with one another over a wired connection, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Variants of the original Ethernet connect countless millions of computers around the world,” writes Bray.
Prof. Aleksander Mądry’s testimony before a House subcommittee was highlighted by Politico fellow Mohar Chatterjee in a recent newsletter exploring how large tech companies are dominating how generative AI technologies are developed and utilized. During his testimony, Mądry emphasized that “very few players will be able to compete, given the highly specialized skills and enormous capital investments the building of such systems requires.”