Prof. Scott Stern speaks to The New York Times’ Sydney Ember about the influx of new businesses created since 2020. “The sustained high rate of both main street and growth-oriented entrepreneurship over the past five years is a piece of super good news about the future of the economy,” says Stern.
Alumnus Vikas Enti ‘20, founder of Reframe Systems, speaks to Boston 25 about his company’s work aimed at lowering the time and costs of home building with their new system that they used to robotically fabricate a residential building in Somerville. “We went from starting foundation work to handing keys over to our customer in about 180 days,” says Enti. “It would typically take about 18 months to build a structure like this in cities like Somerville—it's almost three times faster. Our units also cost 20% lower than traditional construction costs.”
Fast Company’s Adele Peters spotlights “Project Obsidian,” a new geothermal power plant developed by MIT spinout Quaise Energy. The findings of former Senior Research Engineer Paul Woskov helped Quaise develop their tech. “Paul’s epiphany was realizing that if we can use the same energy to heat plasmas to millions of degrees Celsius to get fusion, why not use that for heating and drilling through rock at a much more modest temperature?” says Matthew Houde, Quaise co-founder.
For the Boston Globe, reporter Aaron Pressman features MIT startup VulcanForms, a 3D printing manufacturer expected to create over 1,000 jobs with a new 1-million-square-foot-plant in Devens, MA. The facility will bring capacity for more customers in medical devices, aerospace and defense, and consumer goods industries. “MIT professor John Hart started the company with grad student Martin Feldmann [‘14] as a way to bring 3D printing techniques using lasers and powdered metals to larger-scale manufacturing jobs,” writes Pressman.
For Axios Boston, reporter Steph Solis highlights “Anita,” a solar-electric boat created by alumnus James Worden ‘89 that is due to launch this year. The boat was previewed at the 80th anniversary Charles River sail-a-thon. “The prototype, named ‘Anita’ after Worden's late wife, moves silently with no fumes or exhaust and uses LiFePO4 battery cells with a battery management system (it lets you charge the batteries while they're in use),” writes Solis.
Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Elisabeth Reynolds describe how the U.S. can maintain its technological leadership by investing in research focused on critical minerals, semiconductors, biotechnology, quantum computing, drones and advanced manufacturing. “Invention is important, but technological leadership in the 21st century will go to the country that adopts these new ideas rapidly and applies them in clever ways,” Johnson and Reynolds write. “And that will require the U.S. to build vibrant innovation and industrial ecosystems that adopt and diffuse new technologies, including AI.”
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray features LymeAlert, a 15-minute home test kit created by alumna Erin Dawicki ‘24, that can detect Lyme disease from up to five ticks at a time. “For the people who find a tick, and it’s positive, we can give them one dose of antibiotic and have a pretty good chance of preventing the disease,” Dawicki explains.
For the Scientific American special section “The Young American Scientists,” Institute Prof. Robert Langer speaks with Megha Satyanarayana about the “spectacular” history of American innovation and education, and why he feels it’s important to celebrate scientific achievements in the same way we honor celebrities and sports stars. “I’m just a big believer in the resilience of people,” says Langer. “I look at the history of American innovation and education over the past 250 years, and it’s been spectacular. We’ve had world wars, you know, we’ve had depressions, and people keep persisting and keep learning. They keep discovering and they keep inventing.”
MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Arizona State University President Michael Crow joined forces for a spirited discussion moderated by Washington Post reporter Zachary Goldfarb on the importance of curiosity-driven research, examining how universities are preparing the next generation of scientists to lead in America’s rapidly changing technological landscape. “Many of the things we have in our everyday lives, whether they be medical advances, technological advances, a lot of these things came from 30, 40, 50 years of scientists just trying to figure out how things work,” said Kornbluth.
Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman spotlights MIT startup Liquid AI, along with the various AI efforts underway at MIT as part of The Globe’s 2026 Tech Power Players special section. Pressman notes that: “President Sally Kornbluth is reinvigorating the school’s support of the local innovation ecosystem, unveiling new online classes dedicated to AI — with free entry-level classes for anyone — and encouraging more entrepreneurship on campus.”
Honorees on The Boston Globe’s 2026 Tech Power Players list shared their reasons for having optimism about the future of the Greater Boston area’s tech and innovation scene. President Sally Kornbluth says opportunities abound in what she calls “AI + X” — integrating AI into fields such as manufacturing, life sciences, and energy. “Massachusetts can absolutely lead in this next wave,” says Kornbluth.
The Boston Globe’s Tech Power Players list for 2026 features numerous MIT faculty, researchers and alumni. In response to a question about the most promising area in the Boston tech scene right now, President Sally Kornbluth shared: “There isn’t a more important technological field right now than quantum science and technology, and the Boston area has the greatest concentration of quantum talent anywhere in the world.”
Boston Globe reporter Robert Weisman spotlights how MIT is “working to drive artificial intelligence forward in sectors where the region is strongest, from biotechnology and robotics to defense and clean energy. It’s also trying to broaden entrepreneurship through a ‘dorm-to-startup’ push, creating a pipeline of support services — from hack-a-thons to venture funding — to help students to start companies between classes.”
For Fast Company, reporter Max Ufberg features MIT startup Formlabs, a company that has spent over a decade building 3D printers that make professional grade prototyping cheaper and faster. Using the selective laser sintering (SLS) Fuse X1 machine, Ufberg notes that Formlabs will apply their playbook to larger industrial systems. “The goal has always been make it easier to go from an idea to a real thing,” says Formlabs CEO Maxim Lobovsky ‘11.
Moving Health, a D-Lab spinout founded by MIT students, tackles maternal mortality in rural Ghana by decreasing transport time to hospitals. CNN reporter Maya Baylis highlights how Moving Health’s tricycle ambulances were designed to navigate narrow, rough roads in areas where ambulances are scarce or impractical. “Sometimes the biggest barrier to surviving a medical emergency isn’t the lack of hospitals,” says Emily Young ‘18, CEO and co-founder of Moving Health, “it’s being able to get there in time.”