In the Media

MIT has been named the number 2 university in the U.S. in U.S. News & World Report's annual rankings, reports Abigail Hess for CNBC.

John DiFava, chief of the MIT Police, speaks with WCVB-TV about 9/11, when he was Colonel of the Massachusetts State Police. "You know, they say that there's always a silver lining,” says DiFava. “There was no silver lining to that. 9/11 had no silver lining.”

Writing for Pointe Magazine, Grace Young ’14 explores how her background in ballet taught her many of the skills that she currently uses as an engineer. Young emphasizes that as dancer she quickly learned the importance of practicing, a skill she applied as a student at MIT. “If it weren’t for ballet,” she writes, “I’m not sure I would appreciate all the work that goes into making science and engineering skills look effortless.”

Bloomberg’s Janet Wu speaks with alumna Nan-Wei Gong PhD '13, co-founder of Figur8, an MIT startup applying AI to help diagnose musculoskeletal problems. “Figur8 is a tool that really brings lab experience into the field so everyone can quantify their musculoskeletal injuries,” says Gong. “We invented a wearable system that allows you to capture biomarkers of your musculoskeletal health and pinpoint injury through our AI algorithm.”

Motherboard reporter Matthew Gault spotlights how scientists from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems developed a large high-temperature superconducting magnet that can create a magnetic field of 20 tesla, “a breakthrough that paves the way for carbon-free power.”

Boston Globe reporter Nina MacLaughlin spotlights the MIT Press Bookstore, which has reopened in a new space in the MIT Kendall Gateway. “The new space has more square footage than its previous home, and besides offering the books and journals published by the titular press, the bookstore also carries a selection of academic and general interest titles,” writes MacLaughlin, “including a space dedicated to STEAM books for kids, with special attention on the new MIT Kids Press and MITeen Press titles.”

MIT researchers are using magnets to help improve control of prosthetic limbs, reports Emmett Smith for Mashable. “The researchers inserted magnetic beads into muscle tissue to track the specific movements of each muscle,” reports Smith. “That information is then transferred to the bionic limb, giving the users direct control over it.”

WBUR’s Bruce Gellerman explores how researchers from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems successfully demonstrated “the world's strongest high-temperature superconducting magnet, putting them a step closer towards a workable fusion reactor.” The advance “provides reason for hope that in the not-too-distant future, we could have an entirely new technology to deploy in the race to transform the global energy system and slow climate change,” says Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research.

In an article for The Wall Street Journal about efforts to help repair or prevent cartilage damage before osteoarthritis sets in, Laura Landro spotlights how MIT researchers are developing “ways to get drugs into the cartilage tissue and keep them there. They are using microscopic particles called nanocarriers to deliver IGF-1, an insulin like growth factor, to the tight mesh that holds cartilage in joints.”

Scientists from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems have performed a successful test of the world’s strongest high temperature superconducting magnet, a crucial step in creating net positive energy from a fusion device, reports the Associated Press.

Scientists at MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems have cleared a major hurdle in their efforts to achieve net energy from fusion, successfully creating a 20 tesla magnetic field using the high-temperature superconducting magnet they developed, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “This test provides reason for hope that in the not too distant future we could have an entirely new technology to deploy in the race to transform the global energy system and slow climate change,” says Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research.

CNBC reporter Catherine Clifford writes that researchers from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems have successfully demonstrated the high-temperature superconducting electromagnet they developed, creating a 20 tesla magnetic field. “This magnet will change the trajectory of both fusion science and energy, and we think eventually the world’s energy landscape,” says Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems scientists have created a 20 tesla magnetic field using a large, high temperature superconducting fusion magnet, a step towards creating a fusion power plant, reports Stephen Jewkes for Reuters. The researchers aim “to use the technology to build a commercially viable fusion power plant to generate zero-emission electricity.”

Nuria Oliver PhD ’00 speaks with Wired reporter Willem Marx about her work developing a data gathering system to help combat Covid-19 in Valencia, Spain. Olivier and her team developed “a powerful predictor that's been road-tested during a time of unprecedented strain, and continues to be used across Valencia," writes Marx. "They have also created a system that can suggest a small number of specific, effective pandemic-related policies or interventions that a government can make.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Sara Castellanos spotlights Prof. Markus Buehler’s work combining virtual reality with sound waves to help detect subtle changes in molecular motions. Castellanos notes that Buehler and his team recently found, “coronaviruses can be more lethal or infectious depending on the vibrations within the spike proteins that are found on the surface of the virus.”