Quaise Energy co-founder Carlos Araque BS '01 MS '02 speaks with PBS Energy Switch host Scott Tinker about the future of geothermal energy. [Geothermal is “truly everywhere so it’s not a resource uncertainty, like there is with oil and gas, there’s always heat, but the technological gap prevents us from getting to it,” says Araque. These gaps “are the one caveat in unlocking this resource for everybody.”
Insider reporter Katie Hawkinson explores how MIT researchers developed a new solar-powered desalination system that can remove the salt from seawater for less than the cost of U.S. tap water. Creating a device that relies on solar power, “eliminates a major financial barrier, especially for low-income countries experiencing water scarcity,” Hawkinson explains.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that “managers in a large retail chain saw women as having less leadership potential even though their performance reviews were better, on average, than those of their male peers,” reports Sarah Green Carmichael for The Washington Post. “Analyzing data on 30,000 employees, the researchers found that overperforming didn’t do much to improve women’s scores on leadership potential. Their bosses continued to underestimate them.”
Axios reporter Alison Snyder writes about how a new study by MIT researchers finds that preconceived notions about AI chatbots can impact people’s experiences with them. Prof. Pattie Maes explains, the technology's developers “always think that the problem is optimizing AI to be better, faster, less hallucinations, fewer biases, better aligned, but we have to see this whole problem as a human-plus-AI problem. The ultimate outcomes don't just depend on the AI and the quality of the AI. It depends on how the human responds to the AI.”
Prof. Iván Werning speaks with New York Times reporter Peter Coy about whether transitioning from pesos to the U.S. dollar could help control inflation in Argentina. Coy writes that Werning prefers “more conventional solutions such as bringing government budgets closer into balance.”
National Defense Magazine reporter Sean Carberry spotlights Mesodyne, an MIT startup that is developing a thermal photovoltaic power generator that could be used to help extend battery power during military missions. Mesodyne’s LightCell generator can deliver “high-efficiency direct current power from a quiet device with no moving parts that could change the equation of an operator carrying 100 pounds of batteries for a three-day mission,” Carberry explains.
Prof. Moungi Bawendi shares his thoughts at an MIT press conference after being named a recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, reports the AFP. “None of us who started this field could have predicted 30 years later, it would be where we are today,” says Bawendi. “And you know it’s just amazing to me. If you have really great people working on a brand new field with brand new materials, innovation comes out in directions that you can’t predict.”
Sonita Lontoh MLOG '04 has been named to the San Francisco Business Times list of the 2023 most influential women, reports Simon Campbell for San Francisco Business Times. “As a first-generation immigrant from Indonesia, who grew up in a diverse environment with family and friends of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, and who came to the United States alone as a teenager and built a technology career in Silicon Valley, I believe my upbringing and life experiences have enabled me to develop a truly diverse and global perspective,” says Lontoh.
Prof. Moungi Bawendi has been named a recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work and contributions to the field of quantum dots and nanotechnology, reports Brianna Abbott for The Wall Street Journal. “To understand the physics, which was the motivation, we had to create the material,” says Bawendi. “I would never have thought that you could make them at such a large scale and that they would actually make a difference in the consumer area.”
Prof. Moungi Bawendi has been honored as one of the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the discovery and development of quantum dots, reports Emma Bubola and Katrina Miller for The New York Times. Prof. William Tisdale described Bawendi’s prizewinning results as a “key enabling advance, after which the field of quantum dots exploded.”
Prof. Moungi Bawendi, Prof. Louis Brus of Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology Inc., have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in the development of quantum dots, which are “now used to create color in flat screens, light emitting diode (LED) lamps and devices that help surgeons see blood vessels in tumors,” reports Niklas Pollard and Ludwig Burger for Reuters. “In 1993, Bawendi revolutionized the production of quantum dots, made up of clusters ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand atoms,” writes Pollard and Burger.
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Prof. Moungi Bawendi, Prof. Louis Brus of Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology Inc., for their work in the discovery and development of quantum dots, reports Christian Edwards, Katie Hunt and Ed Upright for CNN. Bawendi “changed the chemical production of quantum dots, resulting in what the [Nobel] committee called ‘almost perfect particles,’” they write. “This development allowed dots to be used in applications.”
Prof. Moungi Bawendi has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “fundamental discoveries in nanotechnology, particles once considered impossibly small to make,” reports Mark Johnson for The Washington Post. “In 1993, Moungi revolutionized the process, devising a way to create ‘seed,’ or beginner particles that could then be carefully controlled using temperature,” writes Johnson. “The method allowed him to stop the process to achieve particles of just the right size and quality.”
Prof. Moungi Bawendi was selected as one of three recipients of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for contributions to the field of quantum dots and nanotechnology, report David Keyton, Mike Corder and Christina Larson for the Associated Press. “The motivation really is the basic science. A basic understanding, the curiosity of how does the world work?” says Bawendi. “And that’s what drives scientists and academic scientists to do what they do.”
Prof. Moungi Bawendi has been named one of three winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots, tiny particles that have fueled innovations in nanotechnology from televisions to mapping different tissues in the body,” reports Andrew Joseph for STAT. “Bawendi invented a method for making the dots with high-quality consistency,” explains Joseph.