In the Media

Prof. Tristan Brown discovered that a tea label previously thought to be salvaged from the Boston Tea Party in 1773 actually dates back to the 19th century, writes Smithsonian Magazine’s Ryley Graham. “The artifact’s true origin came to light when Brown took a closer look at the Chinese text on the label...When read in Cantonese, Brown found that the phonetic characters yielded the words 'Smith, Archer,' a reference to Smith, Archer & Co, an American import-export company that shipped teas from East Asia to the United States in the 19th century, nearly a century after revolutionaries dumped British tea into Boston Harbor.” 

In a “radical example of adaptive reuse” and a reimagining of a historic Cambridge landmark, MIT has transformed the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse into the new home of the School of Architecture and Planning, bringing together MIT’s architecture and design programs into one connected academic hub, reports Boston Business Journal reporter Maya Shavit. “There will be new installations and new manifestations of our students’ creativity every single week,” explains Prof. John Ochsendorf. “That’s unpredictable and messy, but it’s also part of the fun of being at a place like MIT where people are constantly inventing the future.”

For The Architect’s Newspaper, reporter Fred A. Bernstein details the renovation of the Metropolitan Warehouse, the new home of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, transforming the fortress-like storage warehouse into “light-filled classrooms and studios.” The building is “going to be a living laboratory and a teaching tool for generations of students,” shares Prof. John Ochsendorf. “Twenty years ago, MIT took me inside and asked if I could see a way to reuse the building. And I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ It was hard to imagine it could be as open and light-filled as it is. That took heroics.” 

Researchers from the Media Lab developed MemPal, a wearable camera that creates a real-time automated text diary of actions and conversations to help older adults locate objects and provide reminders, writes WBUR’s Mike Kalin. “A small study conducted last year by researchers at the MIT Media Lab confirmed improved performance of object finding among users and an overall positive perception of the system. Tools like MemPal could be essential as cases of dementia continue to proliferate,” writes Kalin.  

Prof. Paul Osterman speaks to Forbes’ Courtney Connley-Hampton about his new book “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment,” and how AI may exacerbate the disposable worker trend. “Your only source of power in the labor market is your human capital, your skill,” says Osterman. “Get as much skill as you can. You may end up having to change jobs and move around, but if you have valuable skills, that protects you.” 

Ben Armstrong, executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center, speaks to The New York Times reporter Jack Ewing about humanoid robots being deployed to work in car factories. “Humanoids are a million-dollar solution to a one-hundred-dollar problem,” says Armstrong. “The prospect of humanoids to change the game in automotive is quite small.” 

In an article by The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Emma Nelson, Prof. David Autor discusses low sentiment among middle-class Americans regarding the U.S. economy. “There’s a belief that if you follow the rules, if you go to school and pay your taxes and pay your bills and send your kids to college and whatever, that you’re supposed to do better than the generation before you,” says Autor. “When that does not happen is “part of when [people] feel like society’s not functioning well.” 

Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list spotlights four MIT faculty leading innovation in science and technology: Prof. Paula Hammond, dean of the MIT School of Engineering; Prof. Dina Katabi; Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science; and Aude Oliva, director of MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab. The 50 “science and technology standouts on this list are advancing how we use AI, fight osteoporosis and deploy clean energy.”  

Prof. Dennis Whyte and Prof. Andrew Lo have built a framework to mitigate the economic challenges of fusion power, writes Interesting Engineering’s Ameya Paleja. “While there are multiple approaches to building a nuclear fusion facility, Whyte and colleagues believe that at the end of the day, the facility should be in a position to generate more money that has gone in to building and operating it, otherwise it won’t last for long,” writes Paleja. 

Associate Prof. Taha Choukhmane speaks to Associated Press reporter Adriana Morga about explores the growing trend of consumers using AI for financial guidance, and his recommendation that AI be used as a tool in combination with other trusted sources. “I would encourage people to use AI to explain and define,” says Choukhmane. “If you’re interested in knowing what the stock market is, what the difference between a mutual fund and an index fund is, using AI to explain these concepts can be very useful because it can empower people to get the most out of these methods.”

MIT researchers have discovered space matter that has been ‘missing’ since the 1990s using Fast Radio Bursts, individual flashes of radio waves traveling through space and coming from the distant universe, reports WCVB 5’s Cindy Fitzgibbon. “The takeaway of the study is that by discovering the distribution of the missing matter around galaxies, we have found evidence for strong activities in galaxies,” says graduate student Haochen Wang, a co-author on the study. “In other words, galaxies are busier and messier than we thought.” 

Prof. Raphael Zufferey and his research group developed a winged robot that can swim underwater and fly through the air like a diving bird and “could one day be used to monitor and ultimately help protect the ocean,” reports Tom Page for CNN. “We’re really trying to understand better how birds do this,” says Zufferey. “The other reason we’re doing this is we’re hoping that this becomes (a) future tool for oceanography.” 

In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, Prof. Carlo Ratti and contributor Mario Carpo make the case that AI is built to imitate human creativity and is less capable of original design. “In a profession that defines itself through invention, GenAI increasingly is seen less as a creative genius and more as a ‘stochastic parrot’ — a term introduced in 2021 by leading AI researchers to describe a technology that learns to repeat the most likely sequences found in whatever data it’s been shown,” write Ratti and Carpo. 

Prof. Danielle Wood joins Edgar B. Herwick III, host of GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk,” to discuss the growing problems posed by space junk, and how space technology helps support our critical infrastructure. “Technology from space helps make life safer on Earth, supports our weather forecasting [and] our daily transportation. All the technology that lets us get deliveries and Uber—that's all coming from space,” says Wood. “We definitely need space to be safe—to keep our lives safe.” 

MIT spinoff Found Industries’ new Cambridge headquarters and metals processing development center is highlighted by Boston Business Journal's Lucia Maffei. “We are developing electrochemical processes to recover gallium and, in time, indium, and germanium, and antimony and other critical metals directly from existing industrial streams,” says Peter Godart PhD ‘21, Found Industries CEO.