A study co-authored by Senior Lecturer Donald Sull found that the top factor in employee retention is corporate environment, reports Ellen Rosen for The New York Times. Sull says that a toxic work culture was “10 times more predictive of having a higher-than-industry-average attrition rate than compensation.”
Ronald McNair PhD ’76 was a part of NASA’s class of 1978, which was the first group of astronauts to include women, people of color, and scientists, reports Alexandra Witze for Nature. The class of 1978 “was a time of huge change for NASA,” writes Witze. “It was time for a new type of astronaut for a new type of spaceship.”
Bloomberg reporters Simon Kennedy and Chris Anstey write that Kazuo Ueda PhD ’80, who is expected to be named the Bank of Japan’s next governor, is one of the many prominent students of former MIT Prof. Stanley Fischer PhD ’69. The emphasis at MIT was “economics about the real world," said Fischer. “The faculty makes the place but the students also make the place. One of the reasons you go to MIT is because you have the best students in the world.”
Motherboard reporter Tatyana Woodall writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that AI models that can learn to perform new tasks from just a few examples create smaller models inside themselves to achieve these new tasks. “Learning is entangled with [existing] knowledge,” graduate student Ekin Akyürek explains. “We show that it is possible for these models to learn from examples on the fly without any parameter update we apply to the model.”
Associate Prof. Sarah Williams speaks with Erin Langer at Metropolis about the Civic Data Design Lab’s Motivational Tapestry, a large woven art piece that uses data from the United Nations World Food Program to visually represent the individual motivations of 1,624 Central Americans who have migrated to the U.S. “By allowing a dialogue to open up and be less defensive, art allows us to understand and conceptualize an issue from a different vantage point,” explains Williams.
Prof. Sarah Williams speaks with Erin Langer at Metropolis about the Civic Data Design Lab’s Motivational Tapestry, a large woven art piece that uses data from the United Nations World Food Program to visually represent the individual motivations of 1,624 Central Americans who have migrated to the U.S. “By allowing a dialogue to open up and be less defensive, art allows us to understand and conceptualize an issue from a different vantage point,” explains Williams.
Alumnus Kazuo Ueda has been nominated to lead Japan’s central bank, reports Toru Fujioka for Bloomberg.
Xander, an MIT spinoff founded by Alex Westner SM ’98, has developed glasses that generate real-time captions of conversations for the wearer, reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “The glasses have their own processor and front-facing microphones and are designed to convert conversational speech into text captions,” writes Pressman.
Researchers from the MIT Center for Real Estate Research and elsewhere have found that high carbon dioxide levels can contribute to students achieving lower scores on standardized tests, reports Brandon Kochkodin for Forbes. “Poor air quality is a widespread issue that seems to affect the bulk of the student population,” says Prof. Juan Palacios.
MIT OpenSpace is hosting their annual Winter Family Day on February 25, 2023, reports Hanna Ali for WBUR. “The event promises hands-on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) programming for all ages, as well as live, local music, games and food trucks,” writes Ali.
MIT has been named one of best university in the U.S. for the economic value it returns to its students, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.
Postdoctoral Fellow Lydia Harrington and Boston University Postdoctoral Associate Chloe Bordewich speak with WBUR reporter Yasmin Amer about their exhibit at the MIT Rotch Library on Boston's former Little Syria neighborhood. “We want to show very positive things that Syrians brought with them, as well as their contributions to Boston,” says Harrington. “We wanted to show things in the exhibit that showed everyday life and well-known people in the neighborhood.”
Researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed “Sybil” – an artificial intelligence tool that can predict the risk of a patient developing lung cancer within six years, reports Mallika Marshall for CBS Boston.
Prof. Sara Seager and her colleagues write for Physics Today about how the SpaceX Starship could help transform astrophysics missions. “Assuming it is successful, Starship will dramatically enhance our space capabilities in ways that will qualitatively alter how astrophysics missions can be built,” write Seager and her colleagues.
MIT AgeLab director Joseph Coughlin writes for Forbes that Tom Brady’s second retirement from the NFL demonstrates how those planning for retirement “need to plan for longevity, not the one-and-done retirement we think of today.” Coughlin adds: “Planning for your retirement years means identifying the many different retirements you may have in what has been incorrectly defined as a single life stage and experience. Maybe it will be a traditional retirement, but maybe it won’t.”