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Photo of the MIT Dome and Killian Court in spring

MIT announces plans for fall 2020 semester

Extensive safety protocols will undergird the return of additional students and staff to campus.

July 7, 2020

A new edition of MIT's Starr Forum, hosted by the Center for International Studies on Tuesday, June 23, examined national cultures and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The panel featured, clockwise from top left: Suzanne Berger, MIT’s inaugural John M. Deutch Institute Professor; Peter Krause PhD '11, an associate professor of political science at Boston College; Yasheng Huang, the Epoch F...

When culture clashes with Covid-19

MIT panelists examine the roles of social norms in countries’ differing responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

June 25, 2020

A newly-published study co-authored by MIT professor Christopher Palmer shows that quantitative easing helped consumers substantially during the last big economic downturn.

Helping consumers in a crisis

“Quantitative easing” program let households spend more during the last recession. Could it work again?

June 25, 2020

“If in the 1980s you asked people what would the [mobility] system look like 20 years in the future, they would say it would probably be the same,” Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao says. “Now, really nobody knows what it will it look like.”

What moves people?

Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao, who will direct the new MIT Mobility Initiative, brings behavioral science to urban transportation.

June 15, 2020

A new study led by an MIT professor shows that areas in the U.S. introducing R&D tax credits experience a 20 percent rise in high-quality new-firm-formation over a 10-year period.

State-level R&D tax credits spur growth of new businesses

Study also finds tax breaks for general business investment have slightly negative effect on innovation.

June 12, 2020

MIT researchers have published a study examining which types of businesses should be open or closed during the Covid-19 crisis. Vital forms of commerce that are relatively uncrowded and produce fewer health risks fare the best in the study; less significant types of businesses that generate crowds perform worse.

Which businesses should be open?

In light of Covid-19, an MIT study looks at tradeoffs between economic value and public health, across different types of retail.

June 11, 2020

Vaccines find more success in development than any other kind of drug, but have been relatively neglected in recent decades, according to research from MIT professor Andrew Lo, shown speaking at the 2018 launch of the MIT Quest for Intelligence.

How often do vaccine trials hit paydirt?

Study: Vaccines find more success in development than any other kind of drug, but have been relatively neglected in recent decades.

May 27, 2020

For generations, dissertation defenses have been crowning moments for PhD candidates. Now, with the pandemic limiting activity on the MIT campus from mid-March onward, moving dissertation defenses to Zoom has been a necessary adjustment.

Inside the new world of online dissertation defenses

Emojis, grandmas logging in, and kudos from strangers: How MIT students have finished their PhDs during the pandemic.

May 22, 2020

MIT News recently spoke with three leaders of MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future. Left to right: co-chair David A. Mindell, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing at MIT; executive director Elisabeth Beck Reynolds PhD ‘10, who is also executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center; and co-chair David ...

The changing world of work

MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future responds to rapid changes brought by the pandemic.

May 18, 2020

MIT economist Parag Pathak is co-author of a paper offering a new system for assigning ventilators and other medical resources to Covid-19 patients.

Who gets ventilator priority?

Paper co-authored by MIT economist proposes a new way to handle medical shortages during the Covid-19 crisis.

May 13, 2020

“There aren’t many ways to escape the apparent choice between protecting public health and protecting the economy,” says MIT economist Pierre Azoulay. “There is only one, and that’s innovation.”

An innovation plan to beat Covid-19

MIT economist Pierre Azoulay outlines a roadmap for scientific success against the virus.

May 8, 2020

New research by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu shows that since 1987, automation has taken away jobs from lower-skill workers without being replaced by an equivalent number of labor-market opportunities.

Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality

Job-replacing tech has directly driven the income gap since the late 1980s, economists report.

May 5, 2020

A new study co-authored by an MIT professor shows firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly.

Robots help some firms, even while workers across industries struggle

Study finds manufacturing companies that are quick to automate can thrive, but overall employment drops.

May 5, 2020

MIT professor Daron Acemoglu is co-author of a new study showing that each robot added to the workforce has the effect of replacing 3.3 jobs across the U.S.

How many jobs do robots really replace?

MIT economist Daron Acemoglu’s new research puts a number on the job costs of automation.

May 4, 2020

MIT physicist and historian David Kaiser explores the complicated history of quantum physics in a new book, “Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World,” published by the University of Chicago Press.

How growth of the scientific enterprise influenced a century of quantum physics

In a new book, Professor David Kaiser describes dramatic shifts in the history of an evolving discipline.

April 29, 2020

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