A team of MIT researchers is using supercomputers to develop a potential treatment for Covid-19 that uses a decoy receptor to thwart the novel coronavirus, reports Sara Castellanos for The Wall Street Journal. “Supercomputing resources accelerate this project tremendously,” explains Prof. Kevin Esvelt.
Wall Street Journal reporter Anne Marie Chaker writes that a new study by MIT researchers demonstrates how isolation can trigger a craving for social contact similar to how a hungry person yearns for food. “Right now the normal way to fulfill that need for connection is not available, so we are all getting creative about new ways to connect,” explains Prof. Rebecca Saxe.
Principal Research Scientist Daniel Weitzner speaks with NPR’s Shannon Bond about how a Bluetooth contact tracing developed by MIT researchers could help augment traditional manual contact tracing systems. "We don't need to know where you were close to someone, just that you were close to someone," says Weitzner of how the Bluetooth system would work.
Prof. Martin Culpepper speaks with NBC News reporter Cynthia McFadden about his team’s work designing a new face shield that can be rapidly manufactured. “It’s the kind on ingenuity that MIT is known for,” says McFadden, noting that MIT “has long been on the front lines of solving America’s problems.”
Every morning, a local toddler is greeted with a new adventure and the next page in an new story being penned by Deborah Douglas, director of collections for the MIT Museum, reports Heather Mayer Irvine for The Boston Globe. “I started thinking that I can’t go down and see them even though we’re only separated by 8 inches of floor, so what’s a clever way to communicate?” Douglas said.
WGBH reporter Daniel Ackerman spotlights how MIT startup BioBot Analytics, along with researchers from MIT and other institutions, are sampling wastewater to try to gain a better understanding of the prevalence of Covid-19 in specific communities. Ackerman notes that “Biobot’s sewage sampling could help them craft guidelines for public health protections like social distancing.”
Forbes contributor Frederick Daso spotlights Floating Point Group (FPG), a startup founded by two MIT graduates, is a cryptocurrency trading platform that leverages smart order routing. “FPG has built critical infrastructure to allow cryptocurrency trading at scale between various actors,” Daso explains.
CNN reporter Lesley Kennedy highlights the Lovebox Spinning Heart Messenger, which was designed by an MIT alum, in a roundup of products that can help people stay in touch during social distancing. Kennedy writes that “this clever and romantic gizmo will help keep any long-distance (or quarantine-restricted) relationship thriving.”
Forbes contributor Stuart Levin spotlights a new study by researchers from the Sloan School of Management that finds “the most goal-oriented employees, i.e., those who are most engaged, saw their job satisfaction decrease as their time spend in meetings increased.”
Scientific American reporter Simon Makin writes that MIT researchers have uncovered the neural processing necessary for the human brain to organize memories into meaningful segments. “The work has implications for understanding how humans generalize knowledge, and it could aid efforts to develop AI systems that learn faster,” Makin explains.
Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, and Luke Bryant Yoquinto, a research associate at the AgeLab, write for The Washington Post about how patchwork social distancing regulations in certain areas of the U.S. have put vulnerable populations at risk. “Any policy that puts the people most susceptible to the virus at risk puts us all at risk,” they write.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Emil Verner underscores how public health measures to slow the spread of Covid-19 can aid economic recovery. “This shouldn’t be seen as a choice between saving lives and saving the economy,” writes Verner. “It’s clear that well-calibrated public health interventions are the most beneficial way to protect our health and the health of our economy.”
Professors Sabine Iatridou, Jonathan Gruber and Rebecca Saxe have been honored with Guggenheim fellowships, reports Diti Kohli for The Boston Globe. Kohli notes that “since 1925, the fellowship has bestowed more than $375 million to enable honorees ‘engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts.’”
Washington Post reporter Erin Blakemore explores how MIT researchers have transformed the spike-like proteins of the coronavirus into a musical composition, which could be used to help identify new treatments. The researchers hope the “protein-generated music could be used as an alternate way to visualize the complexity of proteins, and eventually find places to target with drugs.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Visiting Lecturer Irving Wladawsky-Berger highlights how the MIT Connection Science group is using anonymous geolocation data from digital devices to analyze the impact of social distancing measures in New York. The researchers found “social distancing policies have led to major changes in where people spend their time and how they interact with each other.”