The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) topped the list of Supply Chain Digital’s best places to pursue an education in supply chain logistics and management, reports Tom Chapman. “Over the years, MIT CTL has made significant contributions to supply chain and logistics and has helped numerous companies gain a competitive advantage thanks to its cutting-edge research,” writes Chapman.
Radia, an energy startup founded by Mark Lundstrom '91, SM '93, MBA '93, has developed the “Windrunner,” an airplane designed to deliver 300-foot-blades directly to wind farms, reports Maureen O’Hare for CNN. The plane will “help the world meet its decarbonization targets, it’ll use sustainable aviation fuel and need only a simple packed-dirt or gravel runway to land on,” writes O’Hare.
Boston Magazine spotlights MIT’s leading role in the AI revolution in the Greater Boston area. “With a $2 million grant from the Department of Defense, MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab combines with a new research group, Project MAC, to create what’s now known as the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Over the next three years, researchers lead groundbreaking machine-learning projects such as the creation of Eliza, a psychotherapy-based computer program that could process languages and establish emotional connections with users (a primordial chatbot, essentially).”
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights the Perkins School for the Blind Hackathon held at MIT. “The students divided into 10 teams, named after colors, and picked one of eight challenges Perkins had crafted, such as assisting a blind person to navigate an indoor space or to pick up non-verbal cues in video conference conversations,” writes Pressman. “But before writing a line of code, the teams met with people with a disability relevant to the challenge they had selected.”
Washington Post columnist Eduardo Porter spotlights various MIT research efforts aimed at ensuring that AI is used to empower human workers rather than replace them. Prof. David Autor notes: “AI, if used well, can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the U.S. labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization.”
Using microwave plasma technology developed at MIT, 6K inc., is turning metals “including scrap, into high-performance materials for various applications,” reports Alex Pasternack for Fast Company. “The process produces no salt or liquid waste, uses just 10% of the water and half of the energy of conventional processes, and reduces costs by half,” writes Pasternack. “Its technique can also precisely control the composition and structure of materials at the atomic level.”
Boston.com reporter Natalie Gale spotlights the upcoming MIT Sustainability Summit, which will be held this year on April 26. The event, called ‘Systems Change,’ “aims to help bridge the ‘collaboration gap’ on climate solutions, bringing together ideas from different sectors like science, business, and policy making speed up solutions,” writes Gale.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Prof. Stuart Madnick explains the growing risk of cybersecurity attacks and how to address them. “In many cases, companies fall victim to these attacks because they aren’t aware of the risks that they are taking, such as not confirming the quality of a vendor’s security or monitoring whether their outgoing data traffic is being transferred to improper destinations,” writes Madnick. “Organizations can, and must, do these things better to stop the continued rise in data breaches.”
Harry Rein '15, MEng '16 and Chris Tinsley MBA '20 co-founded ShopMy, a marketing platform designed to connect content creators with brands and monetize their content, reports Laruen Forristal for TechCrunch. “ShopMy’s marketing platform equips creators with the tools they need to earn from their product recommendations, like building digital storefronts, accessing a catalog of millions of products, making commissionable links and chatting directly with companies via mobile app,” explains Forristal.
Emily Calandrelli SM '13 speaks with NPR host Adam Bearne about using her science background to encourage children to explore the world of science. Calandrelli has just published a new book of family friendly experiments called, “Stay Curious and Keep Exploring: Next Level.”
Prof. Pulkit Agrawal and graduate student Gabriel Margolis speak with The Economist’s Babbage podcast about the simulation research and technology used in developing intelligent machines. “Simulation is a digital twin of reality,” says Agrawal. “But simulation still doesn’t have data, it is a digital twin of the environment. So, what we do is something called reinforcement learning which is learning by trial and error which means that we can try out many different combinations.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Keri Pearlson, executive director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan, and Jeffrey Proudfoot, a research affiliate with Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan, make the case that while board members are increasingly being tasked with a company’s cybersecurity strategy, they are often not prepared to deal with attacks. “With the increasing mandate on boards to serve as the strategic cybersecurity guards of their companies, more needs to be done to guard the guards themselves,” they write.
Reflex Robotics, a startup co-founded by several MIT alumni, has developed a remotely-operated humanoid robot capable of handling tasks such as grabbing an item off a shelf, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. The robot’s hardware “is an in-house design, featuring a ‘torso’ mounted to a base that allows the arms and sensors to dynamically move up and down,” explains Heater. “It makes for a surprisingly dexterous robot that can access shelves at a variety of heights, while maneuvering tight spaces. The system has a wheeled base, which is perfectly effective for navigating these kinds of layouts.”
Radia – a startup founded by Mark Lundstrom '91, SM '93, MBA '93 – has unveiled the “WindRunner,” a large cargo plane equipped with wind turbine blades aimed at transforming wind energy across the United States, reports Jennifer Hiller and Brian McGill for The Washington Post. “Radia estimates the larger turbines could reduce the cost of energy by up to 35% and increase the consistency of power generation by 20% compared with today’s onshore turbines,” they write.