In the Media

Daily Beast reporter Meredith Bagby spotlights the life of Ron McNair PhD ’76 and his legacy as one of NASA’s first black astronauts. “Astronaut, saxophonist, and karate black belt Ron McNair overcame an impoverished childhood in segregated Lake City, South Carolina to earn a Ph.D. in physics from MIT and become one of NASA’s first Black astronauts,” writes Bagby. “Although Ron’s path to NASA was nearly derailed because of systematic racism and inequality, he found inspiration in the Black leaders around him and persevered.”

Writing for Fast Company, Visiting Scientist Priya Donti examines how “scientists are increasingly looking to AI to help us predict the weather, and some of the most promising approaches come from blending AI with existing scientific knowledge.” Donti notes that a “combination of innovative technology and human wisdom is the best way to harness AI to help us tackle the challenges of the future, especially climate change.”

Joy Buolamwini PhD ’22 has been named one of Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s Top Women for 2023 for her work in developing “more equitable and accountable technology.” Buolamwini “uncovered racial and gender bias in AI services from high profile companies such as Microsoft, IBM and Amazon. Now a sought-after international speaker, Buolamwini continues to advocate for algorithmic justice,” writes Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

Dean Daniel Huttenlocher joins CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” to discuss the current state of AI and how generative AI advances could impact our future. “These recent advances in generative AI technology really do represent a completely different capability in computing than anything we have experienced,” says Huttenlocher. “This is the first tech that can create humanlike expression.”

Prof. Emerita Nancy Hopkins speaks with ABC News about her work advocating for gender equality in academia and "The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science,” a new book by Kate Zernike, a journalist who originally covered Hopkins’ efforts for The Boston Globe. Hopkins notes that when Zernike’s article was published, “this deluge happened. I mean, it was just overwhelming. And women were writing from all over the country and the world and saying, thank you. Thank you for telling the story. It's my story.”

John Olver PhD ’61, “who never lost an election in the nearly 44 years he served as a state representative, state senator, and US representative,” has died at age 86, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “Dr. Olver was respected for his behind-the-scenes work crafting legislation and brokering compromises,” Marqaurd note.

MIT researchers have created a new headset, called X-AR, that can help users find hidden or lost items by sending a wireless signal to any item that has a designated tag on it, reports WHDH. The augmented reality headset “allows them to see things that are otherwise not visible to the human eye,” explains Prof. Fadel Adib. “It visualizes items for people and then it guides them towards items.” 

A new report co-authored by MIT researchers finds that the “US lead in advanced computing has declined significantly over the past five years—especially when measured against China,” writes Will Knight for Wired. The report’s authors emphasize that the US “needs to make sure that the CHIPS Act spending reflects the importance of developing novel ideas in advanced computing, as opposed to just propping up existing technologies,” Knight notes.

Boston Globe reporter Ryan Cross spotlights Chroma Medicine, a biotech startup co-founded by MIT researchers that is “developing a new class of gene editing technologies that could control how our genetic code is read without changing the code itself.” Cross explains that Chroma Medicine’s technology could “have broad applications for treating both rare and common diseases.”

Boston.com reporter Ross Cristantiello writes that MIT researchers have developed a new augmented reality headset that combines computer vision and wireless perception to allow users to track and find objects hidden from view. “The system relies on radio frequency signals that can pass through everyday materials like cardboard, plastic, and wood,” Cristantiello explains.

Postdoc Zach Patterson speaks with Mashable about how he and his colleagues are developing a soft robot inspired by a sea turtle that could potentially "offer a closer look at ocean life and assist in further studying aquatic creatures.” Patterson explains that the robotic turtle is meant to be a “platform for exploring the interaction between soft and rigid materials incorporated into a robotic structure.”

Prof. Hari Balakrishnan has been selected as the recipient of the Marconi Prize for “fundamental discoveries in wired and wireless networking, mobile sensing, and distributed systems,” reports the Press Trust of India. “The Marconi Prize is awarded annually by The Marconi Society to innovators who have significantly contributed to increasing digital inclusivity through advanced information and communications technology.”

A study co-authored by Prof. Jonathan Gruber finds “encouraging parents to care for young children at home is not necessarily the best policy,” writes Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. “Higher payments — and thus more mothers staying home — were associated with worse performance on cognitive tests at ages 4-5, lower likelihood of being in the higher-level track in high school, and more teenage crime,” Lewis notes. “The opposite effect was observed in families that benefited from a policy reform that lowered their day care fees.”

Prof. Josh McDermott co-authored a study that explores how music and podcasts can impact a person’s mood, reports Charlotte Hu for Popular Science. “There’s this big cultural shift in the way that we consume music and other audio that really happened over the last decade,” says McDermott. “It’s just changed the way that people live and probably has a lot of important effects.”

A new study conducted by Prof. Albert Saiz and his colleagues has found “for housing access to improve in Mexico, financial support such as mortgages or subsidies, along with greater buy-in from local governments and the private sector, is key,” writes Kylie Madry for Reuters.