In an article for the Financial Times, MIT President L. Rafael Reif writes: “Tomorrow’s research university will have the campus as the centre of a much-widened sphere… Digital technology holds the power to increase radically the number of students who can access our teaching.”
Dr. Otto Scharmer writes for The Huffington Post about a group of Indonesian leaders participating in the MIT IDEAS program. The program is a “15-month journey of profound individual and institutional innovation and change,” writes Scharmer.
The Economist reports on an MIT study on the effectiveness of massive open online courses or MOOCs. Researchers found that MOOC participants “learned slightly more than they typically would in lectures.”
Boston.com reporter Erin Connolly writes about the MIT panel on women in STEM, highlighting the personal stories of three panel participants. “We really need to make sure that women have the privilege to move forward in any field we want,” said MIT senior Tami Forrester during the event.
Writing for USA Today, John Waggoner writes about MIT Professor Eric So’s tip for predicting whether a company’s earnings will be good or bad. According to So, if a company moves the date of its earnings report up they have good news and if the date is moved back they are typically reporting bad news.
Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnston writes about a new MIT study showing that while employees are happier when they work with people of the same sex, single-sex workplaces aren’t nearly as productive. Employees “liked the idea of diversity more than they liked actual diversity,” says Dr. Sara Ellison, co-author of the study.
Tania Lombrozo of NPR writes about MIT Professor Nancy Kanwisher's new video examining the basics of brain imaging. “Readers might be especially interested in Kanwisher's tips for critically evaluating functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies, explained in the video,” writes Lombrozo.
Barney Thompson writes for the Financial Times about how massive open online courses (MOOCs), such as those offered by edX, are changing higher education. “We offer 220 subjects in everything from law to medicine, humanities, arts, music, computer science and engineering,” says edX CEO and MIT Professor Anant Agarwal.
Tom Fox-Brewster writes for The Guardian about how researchers are using big data to revolutionize sports. Fox-Brewster writes that MIT Professor Cynthia Rudin believes “Big Data analytics can help in various ways, from tweaking training plans to determining patterns about competitors.”
Boston Globe reporter Jennifer Smith writes about HackMIT, a "code-writing marathon" held at the Institute over the weekend. HackMIT is, “exciting, because it’s one of the biggest hackathons and has a great atmosphere,” says participant Leila Chan Currie.
Professor Simon Johnson writes for The Guardian that relaxing some immigration constraints could help to reduce unemployment in the U.S. “[S]ome categories of immigrants tend to create jobs, so letting them in would directly increase employment opportunities for people already in the United States,” explains Johnson.
Professor Ernest Moniz, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, participates on NPR’s quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!. “A number of young scientists around the country considered the pathway I've taken one that inspires them. And it's really a pleasure to be able to hopefully encourage these young students,” says Moniz.
Niina Heikkinen reports for Scientific American that MIT researchers have identified a new way to make yeast more ethanol-tolerant. The researchers were able to improve “alcohol tolerance and extend the amount of time that individual cells could produce ethanol.”
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes about the ‘Descience’ fashion show held at the MIT Media Lab. The science-themed fashion show brought together researchers and designers to create garments that reflected each group’s line of study.
Carol Hildebrand writes for Forbes about a new book co-authored by Dr. Andrew McAfee and Dr. George Westerman that examines how well organizations integrate technology into their business strategy. The authors studied more than 500 companies in various industries and found a small number that effectively use digital technology.