In the Media

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti addresses New York’s congestion pricing plan – an attempt to prevent traffic build up and improve public transportation – and ways Boston can develop a similar and more effective policy. “With congestion pricing, the city and state can combat the climate emergency, the cost of living crisis, and improve quality of life,” says Ratti. “If they don’t take action now, something even worse will come to pass: Boston will find itself outdone by New York.”

Quartz reporter Michelle Cheng spotlights a working paper by Prof. David Autor which shows that “AI could enable more workers to perform higher-stakes, decision-making tasks that are currently relegated to highly-educated workers such as doctors and lawyers.” As Autor explains, “in essence, AI used well can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the US labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization.”

Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, has been named MIT’s first chief innovation and strategy officer, reports Supriya Singh for New India Abroad. “In his new role, Chandrakasan will work closely with MIT president Sally Kornbluth, key stakeholders across MIT, as well as external partners, to launch initiatives and new collaborations in support of strategic priorities,” explains Singh.

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have estimated that the use of algorithms in public domains may provide “real value to the public while also saving the government money,” reports Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. The researchers suggest algorithms “that target workplace safety inspections, decide whether to refer patients for medical testing, and suggest whether to assign remedial coursework to college students,” have had similar impacts as those in public domains.

For the first time, MIT physicists have successfully imaged how heat travels in a superfluid, known as a “second sound,” reports Darren Orf for Popular Mechanics. “While exotic superfluids may not fill up our lives (yet),” writes Orf, “understanding the properties of second wave movement could help questions regarding high-temperature superconductors (again, still at very low temperatures) or the messy physics that lie at the heart of neutron stars.”

Gizmodo reporter Isaac Schultz writes that MIT scientists have captured images of heat moving through a superfluid, a phenomenon that “may explain how heat moves through certain rare materials on Earth and deep in space.”  Schultz notes that the researchers believe their examination of heat flow in a superfluid “can be used to determine heat flow in high-temperature superconductors, or even in neutron stars, the roiling, ultra-dense relics of ordinary stars.”

Axios reporter Courtenay Brown spotlights a new report by researchers from MIT and the Brookings Institute that finds poorer counties in the U.S. with lower employment rates have, “attracted a large share of the hundreds of billions of dollars allocated for clean energy projects, semiconductor mega-factories and more.” Brian Deese, an Innovation Fellow at MIT, explains that: “Distressed communities are attracting new clean energy and semiconductor investment at roughly twice the rate of traditional private investment. If this trend continues, it has the potential to change the economic geography of the country and create economic opportunity in parts of this country that too many people have written off in the past.”  

Senior lecturer Tara Swart speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Netburn about healthy compartmentalization. Swart says “at its most useful, compartmentalization is the ability to acknowledge challenges in your personal circumstances or current events, and make a conscious decision to not allow those things to take over your thoughts and emotions,” writes Netburn. “But that doesn’t mean shutting out the world.”

MIT researchers have developed a new technique “that could allow most large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to retain memory and boost performance,” reports Tony Ho Tran for the Daily Beast. “The process is called StreamingLLM and it allows for chatbots to perform optimally even after a conversation goes on for more than 4 million words,” explains Tran.

Prof. Paulo Lozano speaks with Kaity Kline of NPR’s Morning Edition about the space stations of the future and how NASA collaborating with private companies on the development of the next iteration of the International Space Station could spur new technological advancements. “Once you have entrepreneurship and you have a commercial interest, that accelerates technology development,” says Lozano. 

Omar Abudayyeh '12, PhD '18 and Jonathan Gootenberg '13 speak with Robert Weisman at The Boston Globe about their deep-rooted working relationship, which began as undergraduates at MIT and has gone on to include joint appointments at the McGovern and Broad Institutes and multiple startups. “Science is difficult, and it’s great to have someone to do it with,” said Gootenberg. “You got to work with people you enjoy hanging out with.”
 

MIT researchers have developed new technology that allows vaccines to be directly inserted into the lymph nodes to target two of the most common mutations in the KRAS gene, which cause roughly one third of all cancers, reports Jaimie Seaton for Scientific American. “The team modified the small vaccine components to include a fatty acid, which enables the vaccine to effectively hitch a ride on albumin, a common protein found throughout the body,” explains Seaton. “Albumin serves as a molecular shuttle bus, with pockets on its surface where fatty acids can bind to it.”

Physics World reporter Tim Wogan spotlights how MIT physicists have developed a new technique for measuring the temperature of “second sound,” the movement of heat through a superfluid. “The work could help model a variety of scientifically interesting and poorly understood systems, including high temperature superconductors and neutron stars,” Wogan explains.

Prof. Xuanhe Zhao speaks with Amerigo Allegretto of AuntMinnie.com about his work developing a new ultrasound sticker that can measure the stiffness of internal organs and could one day be used for early detection and diagnosis of disease. “Due to the huge potential of measuring the rigidity of deep internal organs, we believe we can use this to monitor organ health,” Zhao explains.

MIT has been named to the number two spot in Times Higher Education’s world reputation rankings, reports Times Higher Education. MIT is “dedicated to the teaching of science and technology. The sheer number of Nobel laureates affiliated with the institution – an impressive 101 – reveals the caliber of MIT graduates,” Times Higher Education notes. “Scientific discoveries and technological advances to come out of the college include the first chemical synthesis of penicillin, the development of radar, the discovery of quarks and the invention of magnetic core memory, which aided the development of digital computers.”