Alumni/ae

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.

Susan M. Collins PhD ‘84 has been named the next president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, reports Michael S. Derby for The Wall Street Journal. “Throughout my career, I have been driven by a commitment to leveraging research, education and public service to improve lives,” says Collins. “I look forward to helping the bank and system pursue the Fed’s dual mandate from Congress – achieving price stability and maximum employment.”

Symmetry Magazine reporter Stephanie Melchor spotlights the work of Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr. ’73, PhD ’77, a theoretical physicist “committed to ensuring young people have access to educational resources.” Melchor notes that during his time at MIT, Gates “started a tutoring program for MIT students called the Black Student Union Tutorial Program. He says it was during this tutoring that he realized he loved teaching.”

The Tyee reporter Andrew Nikiforuk spotlights research conducted by Alex Siegenfeld SB ‘15, PhD ‘22, Yaneer Bar-Yam SB ’78, PhD ’84, and their colleagues to better understand the hesitancy behind accepting the efficacy of mask wearing. “There weren’t any studies that conclusively showed masks were not effective, yet common sense just got undervalued,” says Siegenfeld.

Boston Globe correspondent Rose Pecci spotlights Joseph Applegate, a linguist who was the first appointed Black faculty member at MIT. Applegate “had a 60-year career in languages. By the end of his career, he knew 13 of them and was considered an expert on the Berber tongues of North Africa.”

Quaise Energy, a startup out of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, has developed a millimeter wave drilling system to access layers of rock that reach over 700 degrees Fahrenheit, making geothermal power more accessible, reports Adele Peters for Fast Company. “Wind and solar [power] take up quite a bit of land,” writes Peters. “If geothermal power can be affordable anywhere, it could help fill an important gap in getting to 100% renewable electricity.”

Yuanming Hu SM’19, PhD ’21 and Ye Kuang co-founded startup Taichi Graphics, a cloud-based platform which aims to make 3D content creation easier to develop, share and collaborate on, reports Rita Liao for TechCrunch. “Undergirding the platform is its open-source programming language Taichi, which offers a high-performance computation on spatially sparse data structures like those from 3D visual graphics,” writes Liao.