MIT has been named the No. 2 university in the world, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, reports Rosa Ellis. “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is now the US’ highest-ranked university, in second place globally, its best-ever performance,” explains Ellis.
Researchers at MIT have developed GenSQL, a new generative AI system that can be used “to ease answering data science questions,” reports Allison Proffitt for Bio-It World. “Look how much better data science could be if it was easier to use,” says Research Scientist Mathieu Huot. “It’s not perfect yet, but we believe it’s quite an improvement over other options.”
Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with Associated Press reporter Terry Spencer about Tampa Bay’s vulnerability to incoming hurricanes. “It’s a huge population,” explains Emanuel. “It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition. I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.”
A new commentary by Prof. Jonathan Gruber and his colleagues outlines a proposal for a new long-term care at home plan, aimed at enabling seniors to stay in their homes, reports Jonathan Cohn for HuffPost. “Relative to other countries, we’re very nursing home focused, and we’re not really doing enough to keep people at home,” says Gruber. “I also just think it’s a valuable benefit to people that makes their lives better.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money about a recent survey that claims "almost 40% of Americans, ages 18 to 64, have used generative AI." "My concern with their numbers is that it does not distinguish fundamentally productive uses of generative AI from occasional/frivolous uses," says Acemoglu.
Sloan Visiting Senior Lecturer Paul McDonagh-Smith speaks with Joe McKendrick of Forbes about the ongoing discussions about AI safety guidelines. “While ensuring safety is crucial, especially for frontier AI models, there is also a need to strike a balance where AI is a catalyst for innovation without putting our organizations and broader society at risk,” explains McDonagh-Smith.
Maria Lucchi SM '24 speaks with Andy Gray of Supply Chain 24/7 about her “journey from working the deli counter at her local supermarket to her current role as a Supply Demand Planner at Apple.” Says Lucchi of MIT’s Supply Chain Management Graduate Program: “MIT gave me the opportunity to think about the type of person and co-worker I wanted to become.” She added that: “Our executive director, Dr. Saénz, always talks about a footprint. So I really thought about what kind of footprint I wanted to leave behind.”
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros '75, PhD '79 and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA, “a tiny class of RNA molecules that play a crucial role in determining how organisms mature and function – and how they sometimes malfunction,” reports Teddy Rosenbluth and Derrick Bryson Taylor for The New York Times. Ambros and Ruvkun “had been postdoctoral fellows at the same time at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” they explain . “As they studied C. elegans, they at first felt a smidgen of friendly competition as they each started their own labs in the Boston area, Dr. Ambros said.”
Victor Ambros '75, PhD '79 and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNAs, report Mark Johnson and Lizette Ortega for The Washington Post. “Ambros and Ruvkunhad worked together as postdoctoral researchers in the lab of Nobel laureate and MIT Professor Robert Horvitz. “What the microRNAs really end up revealing for us is a way that parts of our genome can communicate with other parts of the genome,” says Ambros. “The significance of this discovery of microRNAs is that it allowed us to be aware of a very complex and nuanced layer of regulation whereby genes in our cells talk to each other.”
Prof. Anna Stansbury speaks with Soumaya Keynes of the Financial Times podcast “The Economics Show” about her recent research on the class ceiling, which finds that an individual’s family circumstances can hold them back, even if they have earned a PhD. “We should care if people have opportunities to fulfill their talents for reasons of equity and justice. But the other is a very kind of banal economic reason, which is efficiency,” says Stansbury. “If you assume that talent for something is equally distributed, then we should care if people that are talented aren’t getting to fulfill that talent because it’s worse for overall productivity and overall outcomes.”
Profs. Canan Dagdeviren and Hugh Herr speak with CNN discuss their work aimed at empowering patients and doctors. Inspired by her aunt’s experience with breast cancer, Dagdeviren and her students are developing new wearable devices that could help detect cancer at an earlier stage. Says Herr of his work developing prosthetics that can be controlled by the human nervous system: “There will be a point where technology is so sophisticated that we can actually rebuild limbs after amputation that will be as good and, ultimately, they will be better than intact biological limbs.” Herr adds that in the future he hopes “the conversation will not be about human limitation anymore. It will be about human ability and human expression.”
Victor Ambros ‘75, PhD ‘79 and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their groundbreaking work on how genes behave,” reports Patrick Smith for NBC News. Ambros and Ruvkun, who worked as postdocs in the lab of Professor H. Robert Horvitz in the late 1980s, discovered how microRNA molecules play a key role in gene regulation. "The pair sought to explore how nerve cells and muscle cells, for example, have very different characteristics despite having the same genetic information," writes Smith.
Wired reporter Parker Hall spotlights Lila Snyder SM '96, PhD '98 and her impact as CEO of Bose. Snyder "helped turn a rickety start in the wireless earbud and Bluetooth speaker space into some of the sleekest, best-sounding models on the market," explains Hall. "In a world where management consultants and tech executives are known for stripping companies for parts and raising prices, Snyder and a slimmed-down Bose have maintained the brand’s noise-canceling superiority in the face of stiff competition from Apple, Sony, and others.”
Writing for MarketWatch, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, emphasizes that the dockworker strike was “emblematic of broader shifts in the American workforce and the integration of technology in the workplace. As older generations retire and younger ones seek more flexible, technology-driven careers, traditional industries must adapt or be left behind.”
On October 8, the MIT Museum is hosting a “Techno, Art, and Music Robots talk with artist and engineer Moritz Simon Geist,” reports The Boston Globe. The talk will focus on “the intersection of music and robotics,” writes The Boston Globe.