Alumna Emily Calandrelli S.M. ’13 speaks with Guardian reporter Kieran Yates about the need for more diversity in the space sector. Calandrelli notes that the push for greater diversity and inclusion will lead to new ideas and innovations, saying: “I can’t remember feeling as excited about the future of the industry as right now.”
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights MIT startup Superpedestrian, a scooter rental service. “Superpedestrian’s scooters, packed with sensors, GPS, and a cellular connection, don’t need to be parked in a dock,” writes Pressman. “Instead, the company scatters them around cities in convenient locations.”
New York Times reporter Ben Casselman spotlights a study by Prof. Daron Acemoglu that finds many technological advances have replaced human labor without increasing productivity. “If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we would have had a very different trajectory for inequality,” says Acemoglu.
Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Christopher Capozzola investigates how for the Philippines, independence from the U.S. did not mean national sovereignty. “On this Fourth of July, as Americans celebrate our own independence, it’s worth recalling the moments in our past when we have failed to support the independence of others,” Capozzola writes.
Institute Prof. Barbara Liskov, Prof. Dina Katabi, Prof. Dava Newman, Prof. Daniela Rus and a number of MIT alumnae and MIT Corporation members have been named to the Academic Influence list of the most influential women engineers in the world, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.
MIT researchers have developed a new robot that can help locate hidden items using AI and wireless technologies, reports Benoit Morenne for The Wall Street Journal. “The latest version of the robot has a 96% success rate at finding and picking up objects in a lab setting, including clothes and household items,” writes Morenne. “In the future, this home helper could also retrieve a specific wrench or screwdriver from a toolbox and assist a human in assembling a piece of furniture.”
Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with Andrew Browne of Bloomberg TV about her work focused on using space technologies as a way to advance the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. Wood emphasizes how space “is a platform for serving the broad public. We use satellites to observe the environment and the climate, we use satellites to connect people across different parts of the Earth, and they give us information about our positions and our weather. All of these are broad public goods that really can serve people across the world all at once.”
WBUR’s Andrea Shea spotlights how every weekend, members of the MIT Guild of Bellringers bring to life the bells at Boston’s Old North Church. MIT Guild of Bellringers ringing master John Bihn explains that “it is really exciting thinking that I'm ringing the same bells that nearly 300 years ago Paul Revere was ringing.”
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Boston Public Radio about the economics behind the music industry. “Music is an incredibly good deal, but part of the reason it’s an incredibly good deal is because musicians don’t make anything,” says Gruber. “Basically the music economy today is exactly where the rest of the economy is today. It’s a superstar economy.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Melissa Korn writes that 2U, an education technology company, will acquire edX for $800 million. The proceeds flow to a new nonprofit, led by MIT and Harvard, which will “focus on reducing inequalities in access to education. It will maintain the open-access course platform built by edX, research online and hybrid-learning models, and work to minimize the digital divide that still serves as a barrier for many younger students and adults,” writes Korn.
Boston Globe reporter Laura Krantz reports that edX will be transferred to the education technology company 2U, and proceeds from the transaction will be used by a nonprofit aimed at addressing education inequalities and reimagining the future of learning.
Reporting for Marketplace, Kai Ryssdal spotlights how the “beer game,” an exercise developed by a group of MIT researchers in the 1960s to simulate supply chain dynamics, is still commonly “used to teach supply chain principles and demonstrate the bullwhip effect.”
Alumnus Mike Cassidy S.B. ’85, S.M. ’86 founded a company called Apollo Fusion, which makes electrical propulsion systems for small satellites, reports Tim Fernholz for Quartz. Apollo Fusion’s thruster were set to be deployed in space for the first time on June 29 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
WHDH spotlights how MIT and Harvard researchers are creating wearable biosensors that could be used to detect Covid-19 in a person’s breath. “At the end of the day, what we wanted to do was basically to blend both to potentially produce a product that was more easily incentivized patients to both wear a mask and to get tested,” explains Luis Soenksen of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health.
A new sensor developed by MIT and Harvard researchers can be embedded in a face mask and used to alert the wearer if they have Covid-19, reports CBS Boston. “Small disposable sensors can diagnose the wearer of the mask within 90 minutes," reports CBS Boston. "The technology has been used before to detect Ebola and Zika, but now researchers are embedding it into face masks and lab coats as a new method to safeguard health care workers.”