In the Media

Gradiant, an MIT startup, is using water technology to “help companies reduce water usage and clean up wastewater for reuse,” reports Simon Jessop for Reuters.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and others are working to build SPARC, a prototype device that aims to extract net energy from plasma and generate fusion power, reports Philip Ball for Scientific American. “SPARC will be a midsize tokamak in which the plasma is tightly confined by very intense magnetic fields produced by new high-temperature superconducting magnets developed at MIT and unveiled in 2021.”  

A study led by Steven Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, found that the AKAP11 gene has a significant impact on a person’s risk for bipolar disorder, reports Kirstie Ganobsik for HealthDay. “This work is exciting because it's the first time we've had a gene with large-effect mutations for bipolar disorder," says Hyman.  

Newsday reporter Edward B. Colbey spotlights Sara Stiklickas ’17 and her journey into the world of computer science. “Leaving high school, Sara Stiklickas figured she'd become an engineer or go to medical school. Computer science wasn't on her radar — until, that is, one course in college changed the path of her life,” writes Colbey.

MIT scientists have found that the earlier stages of sleep are key to sparking creativity and that people could be guided to dream about specific topics, further boosting creativity, reports Ingrid Wickelgren for Scientific American. “There is an objective and experimental link between incubation of some specific dream and postsleep creativity around that topic,” explains postdoc Adam Haar Horowitz. “This validates centuries of anecdotal reports from people who are in the creative space.”

A study by MIT and Harvard researchers has found that sleep onset, the transitional period from a woozy but still awake state into sleep, has a strong effect on creativity, reports Alan Mozes for HealthDay.

Science reporter Sofia Moutinho spotlights how MIT researchers used a glove that tracks sleep stages to guide people’s dreams while they snoozed. Many participants who considered themselves “stuck and uncreative” were surprised at how inventive they could be in their dreams, explains postdoc Adam Haar Horowitz. “Most people don’t know that there’s a piece of themselves that is biologically designed to be totally unstuck, but they’re forgetting it every night.”

Researchers from MIT and Harvard have found that short naps “can help the brain come up with creative solutions to tough problems,” reports Tony Ho Tran for The Daily Beast. “The phenomenon occurs during the very early stages of the sleep cycle known as hypnagogia, or the liminal space right between dozing off and being awake,” writes Tran.

As part of an effort to address racism and discrimination, MIT researchers have developed a new VR role-playing project, dubbed “On the Plane,” writes Axios reporter Russell Contreras. "Our hope is that (players) move away from the experience with an understanding of how xenophobia and other forms of discrimination may play out in everyday life situations," explains CSAIL Research Scientist Caglar Yildirim.

Prof. Stuart Madnick speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Seán Captain about how AI could make scamming easier and more dangerous. AI “raises the level of skepticism that we must have substantially,” notes Madnick. “Procedures will have to be put in place to validate the authenticity of who you are dealing with.”

Prof. Lindley Winslow speaks with Popular Science reporter Shannon Liao about how the new video game, “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” uses physics to help make the game more engaging. “The power comes from the fact that the physics are correct until it is fantastical,” says Winslow. “This allows us to immerse ourselves in the world and believe in the fantastical.”

Guardian reporter Will Hutton spotlights “Power and Progress,” a new book by Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson that makes the case that “the political struggle has consistently aimed to contain excessive inequality of wealth, and act collectively to share prosperity. It is successive waves of transformative technologies above all that bring the productivity gains that create great wealth, only for it to be captured by the incumbent elite.”

Principal Research Scientist Ana Jaklenec speaks with CBC host Bob McDonald about her work developing a mobile vaccine printer. The device “can be very important in certain scenarios when you’re trying to bring the ability to vaccinate in areas that might not have the right infrastructure to make vaccines or even to administer vaccines,” says Jaklenec, “so I think the portability is key here.” 

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found chance encounters among employees of different companies can kickstart innovation, reports Bart Ziegler for The Wall Street Journal. Researchers explained that such chance meetings “may spark a conversation that leads to a transfer of knowledge or a collaboration,” writes Ziegler.

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray highlights a number of MIT startups that are focused on tackling climate change. “Boston has long been a center of clean energy, driven by innovations spinning out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities,” writes Bray.