Alumni/ae

Quipu Market, co-founded by Mercedes Bidart ’19, Juan Cristobal Constain ’18 and Gonzalo Ortegoa ’19, was named one of Fast Company’s most innovative companies in Latin America, reports Fast Company reporter Adam Bluestein. Quipu Market is “a web-based and mobile platform that allows individuals and small entrepreneurs in low-income communities,” writes Bluestein, “to conduct trade using virtual tokens, helping microbusinesses gain visibility and build creditworthiness even without access to formal banking.”

TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights MIT startup Strio.AI, which is aimed at bringing autonomous picking and pruning to strawberry crops.

Steven Gonzalez Monserrate PhD ’22 writes for Scientific American about the ecological and environmental implications of our digital lives. “As [the cloud] continues to expand, its environmental impact increases, even as the engineers, technicians, and executives behind its infrastructures strive to balance profitability with sustainability,” writes Gonzalez Monserrate.

Sajith Wickramasekara ‘15 and Ashu Singhal ’11 co-founded Benchling, a software company designed to make it easier to keep track of laboratory data. The company has now acquired Overwatch, a software company for customers working in preclinical biopharma research, reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. “It [the acquisition] fits really nicely in the direction our company is heading,” says Wickramasekara. “It really helps us extend our offering, especially for biopharma where we’re growing a lot.”

STAT has named Noubar Afeyan ’87, Cornelia Bargmann PhD ’87, Prof. Regina Barzilay and Prof. Sangeeta N. Bhatia to their list of trailblazing researchers working in the life sciences. “Many of the STATUS List are well-known as change makers; others are largely unheralded heroes. But all have compelling stories to tell,” writes STAT.

David Lucchino ’06 and Prof. Robert Langer have co-founded Frequency Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on developing a new approach to restoring hearing from the most common form of hearing loss, reports Jack Kelly for Forbes. “FX-322 is designed to treat the underlying cause of SNHL (sensorineural hearing loss) by regenerating sensory hair cells through activation of progenitor cells already present in the cochlea,” writes Kelly.

Dr. Warren Zapol ’62, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who made breakthroughs in studying the impact of inhaled nitric oxide, died on Dec. 14, 2021, at the age of 79, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “Warren’s discovery and demonstration that nitric oxide is a highly effective therapy for pulmonary hypertension in newborns and in adults is one of the most significant achievements in recent intensive care medicine history,” says Prof. Emery N. Brown, director of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program.

Good Morning America reporters Shivani Parmar, Sara Russell and Zohreen Shah spotlight Payal Kadakia ’05 and her new book, “LifePass: Drop Your Limits, Rise to Your Potential.” Parmar, Russell and Shah note that in Kadakia's book, she writes that "your intuition will tell you if the time is right to meet a specific goal and to listen to the inner voice and figure out what goals you want to focus on.”

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), will address the Class of 2022 at MIT’s Commencement exercises, reports the AP. Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman and first African to lead the WTO, noted that: “From the warm and caring welcome of the International Students Office on my first day of graduate school in 1976, to my tough but equally caring doctoral dissertation committee that propelled me to graduation in 1981, my memories of my time at MIT are spectacularly positive.”

Bloomberg reporter Ben Holland spotlights “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines” – a new book written by Prof. David Autor, Prof. David Mindell and Elizabeth Reynolds PhD ’10 – about the future of job mobility and social safety nets in the United States.

Amrita Saigal ’10 has created Kudos Diapers, a sustainable disposable diaper that allows a baby’s skin to touch nothing but pure cotton, reports Angela Yang for The Boston Globe. “We need to get to that point in the world where people opt for sustainable products not just because of the environmental aspects,” says Saigal. “But also because they’re like, ‘this is the best-performing product on the market.’”

Forbes contributor Carolina Milanesi spotlights Dr. Ana Pinheiro Privette ’98, the global lead for the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), who collaborates with environmental nonprofits, private companies and government agencies to give researchers access to ASDI’s data catalog information. “I’m not sure if I am saving the world, but I’m at least helping people have more resources to do it,” says Pinheiro Privette.

President L. Rafael Reif, who was "instrumental in leading [MIT] to convert its science into innovation, especially in the areas of life sciences, energy, materials, and machine learning and artificial intelligence,” has announced he will step down at the end of 2022, reports Laura Krantz for The Boston Globe. “What I felt was special about Rafael as president was his humanity,” says Prof. Caroline Jones. “He understood when there were problems that couldn’t be solved by technology.”

AP reporter Christopher Rugaber writes that Susan M. Collins PhD ’84 will be the next president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “Dr. Collins brings the technical expertise and insight to contribute to policymaking and the leadership ability to head the organization,” said Christina Paxso and chair of the Boston Fed’s Board of Directors.

Susan M. Collins PhD ’84 has been selected as the next president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, “the first woman of color selected to lead one of the 12 regional Fed branches since the central bank system was created in 1914,” reports Larry Edelman for The Boston Globe. “A common theme throughout my career has been commitment to the mission of public service to improve lives — whether through education, research, or policy,” said Collins.