Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Ramesh Raskar underscores the importance of ensuring that every American has the opportunity to receive the Covid-19 vaccine without cost or without giving up their privacy. “By effectively communicating the privacy benefits of decentralized data collection and anonymized data reporting, mobile apps might diminish barriers to vaccination that exist due to privacy concerns,” writes Raskar.
Reporting for CBS News, Grace Segers spotlights how Alex Padilla ’94 has been selected for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ Senate seat. “Alex Padilla worked his way from humble beginnings to the halls of MIT, the Los Angeles City Council and the State Senate, and has become a national defender of voting rights as California's Secretary of State,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Alex Padilla ’94 has been appointed to fill the Senate seat held by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, reports Shawn Hubler for The New York Times. Padilla, who will be the first Latino senator from California, said of his appointment: “I love public service and I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years, and I’d like to continue as long as I’m effective and they’ll continue to have me.”
Alex Padilla ’94 has been selected to replace Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in the Senate, and will be the first Latino from California to join the Senate, reports Domenico Montanaro for NPR. “From those struggling to make ends meet to the small businesses fighting to keep their doors open to the health care workers looking for relief, please know that I am going to the Senate to fight for you,” said Padilla. “We will get through this pandemic together and rebuild our economy in a way that doesn't leave working families behind."
Vice President for Open Leaning Sanjay Sarma speaks with Jeffrey Young of EdSurge about how the brain works when understanding new concepts. "I question a lot of the structures and dogmas in education that are very closely held, but not necessarily based on science,” says Sarma. “And if we have the courage to reexamine these assumptions and reconstitute education, there's an incredible opportunity to change the game.”
Prof. Dava Newman speaks with WBUR’s Max Larkin about being selected as the new director of the MIT Media Lab. Larkin highlights how Newman, an aerospace engineer and former deputy administrator of NASA, “comes into the role with a stellar resume.” Newman remarks that “superstars and genius come in all forms and shapes.” As director, she says she hopes to celebrate the lab’s “‘infinite diversity in infinite combinations.’”
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey writes that Prof. Dava Newman has been selected as the new director of the MIT Media Lab. Coldewey notes that Newman is "starting off the job by emphasizing one of the best qualities a leader should have: listening to the people she’ll be leading.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Berger highlights Superpedestrian, an MIT startup and electric scooter company that secured $60 million in funding. Berger notes that Superpedestrian “spent more than four years designing a vehicle intelligence system that can diagnose and maintain itself.”
Forbes contributor Louis Columbus spotlights Verta, an MIT startup that is “dedicated to solving the complex problems of managing machine learning model versions and providing a platform where they can be launched into production.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Ernest Moniz, the former U.S. Secretary of Energy, underscores the importance of addressing climate change. Moniz calls for providing “as many options and as much flexibility as possible to meet the deep decarbonization goal — and innovation is key. We need as many low- to no-carbon tools as can be developed. This inclusive approach is what will get us to a shared goal of climate risk mitigation the fastest.”
A national survey led by Prof. Charles Stewart III found that Americans generally had smooth experiences voting in the 2020 presidential election, reports Alexa Corse for The Wall Street Journal. Stewart explains that he thinks many voters will continue voting by mail in the future. “I think there will be less reeling back than the rhetoric is suggesting right now,” says Stewart. “State legislatures are going to discover that a lot of the security questions they have are based on exaggerated claims.”
Axios reporter Bryan Walsh spotlights a new study by researchers from MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future that examines the impact of AI on the future of work. Walsh notes that the report’s authors “recommend programs that can enhance computer skills from kindergarten through the university level, while urging businesses and worker organizations to build cushions for the sometimes harsh changes AI will wreak on work.”
Writing for Scientific American, Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, and Greg Tananbaum, director of the Open Research Funders Group, underscore the importance of open science. “We call on universities to emulate MIT and launch an open science task force,” they write. “The MIT model is a true collaboration among the administration, chairs and faculty that includes the development and deployment of open science plans tailored to the disciplinary considerations of each department.”
MIT researchers have developed a new atomic clock that can keep time more precisely thanks to the use of entangled atoms, reports Leila Stein for Popular Mechanics. “If all atomic clocks worked the way this one does then their timing, over the entire age of the universe, would be less than 100 milliseconds off,” Stein writes.
Noubar Afeyan ’87, a member of the MIT Corporation, speaks with NPR’s Joel Rose about the importance of immigrants and the role of immigration in major scientific advances, including the development of two Covid-19 vaccines. "I think of innovation as a form of intellectual immigration," Afeyan said. "You leave your comforts behind you. You face unrecognizable challenges. You take nothing for granted. You don't feel like in your new country people owe you anything."