Fast Company reporter Amelia Hemphill spotlights the work of Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18, and her startup Bloomer Tech, which is “dedicated to transforming women’s underwear into a healthcare device.” “Our big goal is to generate digital biomarkers,” says Chong Rodriguez. “Digital biomarkers work more like a video, so it will definitely allow a more personalized care from the physician to their patient.”
Bloomberg reporter Tanaz Meghjani writes that MIT researchers created a new system to 3D print a customized replica of the human heart, which could help improve replacement valve procedures. The new system “mimics blood flow and pressure in individual diseased hearts, suggesting a way to predict the effects of various replacements and select the best fit, avoiding potential leakage and failure,” Meghjani writes.
MIT engineers have developed a new technique for 3D printing a soft, flexible, custom-designed replica of a patient’s heart, report Gabrielle Emanuel and Amy Sokolow for WBUR. The goal of the research is to “provide realistic models so that doctors, researchers and medical device manufacturers can use them in testing therapies for different types of heart disease,” Emanuel and Sokolow explain.
Aera Therapeutics, founded by Prof. Feng Zhang, is working to “debut a type of protein nanoparticle that it believes can be used to ferry all sorts of genetic medicines around the body,” reports Lisa Jarvis for Bloomberg.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Erin Kelly shares her research on the impact of remote work. “The challenge is setting boundaries and feeling it’s acceptable to set them, and that requires deliberate company policies,” writes Kelly.
Graduate student Ziv Epstein speaks with Vice reporter Rachel Cheung about the legal implications of the development and use of AI tools being used to create art. “We need more both technical and social research, understanding how these things work, how people feel about them, and then we can make those decisions based on good science,” Epstein said. “Because right now, we’re just really at the brink of the beginning.”
MIT researchers have constructed a mini city to test to safely test algorithms designed for autonomous vehicles, reports Mashable. “The idea of the mini city is that we have lots of cars going at the same time and we can actually test out new algorithms in a safe environment,” says graduate student Noam Buckman.
Writing for Fortune, Prof. Elazer R. Edelman and Mike Mussallem of Edwards Lifesciences write that the backlog of deferred medical treatments caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting long-term health consequences could impact public health for years. Edelman and Mussallem emphasize that “it is incumbent upon us to identify timely real-world evidence to elucidate the effects of policy changes so they can be adaptive and agile enough to provide access to critical interventions and procedures.”
After almost 50 years, the MIT Juggling Club, which was founded in 1975 and then merged with a unicycle club, is the oldest drop-in juggling club in continuous operation and still welcomes any aspiring jugglers to come toss a ball into the air, reports Stacy Kess for Cambridge Day. Through the years the club has “attracted a cross-section of humanity: young, old, students, professors, people who changed the course of the world, artists, writers, performers and the juggling-curious,” writes Kess.
Prof. M. Taylor Fravel, director of the MIT Security Studies Program, speaks with New Yorker reporter Isaac Chotiner about China’s military strategy and the future of U.S.-China relations. “In the last five years, China, with a much more modern military, has many more options that it can draw from when it’s thinking about how to advance its interests,” says Fravel. “It can use displays of force to much greater effect than before.”
A new study co-authored by Prof. S.P. Kothari “analyzes the stock returns of thousands of companies from 1988-2020, comparing those that repurchased shares against firms that didn’t, adjusting for their size and other factors,” reports Jason Zweig for The Wall Street Journal. “We don’t see massive misuse as some people allege,” says Kothari. “This isn’t a rigged game where CEOs are lining their pockets.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere are analyzing patients’ speech patterns to see if they can detect Lou Gehrig’s disease in its early stages, reports Ben Leonard, Ruth Reader, Carmen Paun and Erin Schumaker for Politico. “Catching it early and beginning treatment can improve patients’ quality of life and delay symptom onset,” they write.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Tony Dokoupil of CBS News about how the rise of artificial intelligence could change the quality of jobs. "What we've seen over the last four decades in the U.S. and many industrialized economies is what economists call labor market polarization, which means the hollowing out of the middle set of jobs,” says Autor. The "hollowing out" of the middle has led to some in the labor market moving up and making more money, while others are now making less — and "that's especially where the pain happens," Autor adds.
Senior Ryan Wilson speaks with CBS Boston’s Dan Roche about being the first Boston area student athlete to run a sub 4-minute mile and being named the Division 3 National Athlete of the Week. "It felt amazing. I saw my teammates and I actually gave them a smile with about 400 [meters] to go,” says Wilson of his record-breaking time. "Everybody loves Ryan. Everybody is rooting for him," said Coach Riley Macon. "So for him to be the one that does it, I mean, tears were had. It was pretty exceptional."
Prof. Feng Zhang founded Aera Therapeutics, a startup working to deliver curative genetic medicine to hard-to-reach parts of the body, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. “If Aera’s approach works in people, it could broaden the reach of genetic therapies, which currently have limited clinical applications – partly because there aren’t enough methods for getting those medicines to hone in on the right cells,” writes Cross.