Rebellions Inc., a company founded by alumnus Park Sunghyun S.M. ’11, PhD ’14, is developing a microchip aimed at “running artificial intelligence more efficiently, which could cut precious millionths of a second off the reaction times of automatic-trading machines,” reports Hooyeon Kim and Whanwoong Choi for Bloomberg.
Prof. Robert Jaffe speaks with CNN reporter Stephanie Bailey for a piece that explores how the rivalry between Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse helped lead to transformations in the development of electricity. Bailey also features alumnus Joel Jean and his solar tech startup.
Gizmodo reporter Andrew Liszewski spotlights MIT startup OPT Industries, which has created a new type of Covid-19 nasal swab “that’s faster at absorbing samples, and better at releasing it for analysis.”
Alumnus David Oh ’91, SM ’93, ScD ’97 speaks with Ars Technica reporter Eric Berger about his work serving as the technical lead for NASA’s Psyche mission, a robotic spacecraft that is set to voyage to a metallic asteroid using a propulsion technology called Hall thrusters. Berger writes that Oh, who worked on Hall thrusters as a graduate student at MIT, is “eager to learn whether Psyche may be the core of something that could have become a planet during the early days of our Solar System but ultimately didn't.”
Alumna Farah Alibay PhD ’14 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Charlie McKenna about her work with the Ingenuity helicopter, an experiment aimed at achieving flight on Mars. “If we are able to demonstrate flight, it could open up possibilities, incredible possibilities for future missions that could be scout helicopters for rovers or science helicopters for exploring Mars,” says Alibay. “It just opens up aerial explorations of Mars, then possibly other planets, too.”
Forbes contributor Laura Rittenhouse profiles alumna Lisa Su ’90 SM ’91 PhD ’94, the first woman to rank at the top of the Associated Press’s 2020 annual survey of CEO compensation.
Forbes contributor Jack Kelly spotlights Ginger, an MIT startup that has created “a smartphone-based technology app helps identify patterns of anxiety, stress and depression.”
Fast Company reporter Nate Berg highlights Ori, an MIT startup that makes motorized furniture that can be used to transform small spaces.
Al Chen '00, SM '02, a NASA systems engineer, speaks with NBC Boston about the hidden surprises that NASA engineers hid on the Perseverance rover for NASA fans and science enthusiasts to uncover. “I was at MIT for six years, we loved coding things, Mystery Hunt is a big deal,” says Chen. “I think it's a little bit of a chance to bring the art and the engineering together.”
Bloomberg reporter Craig Torres spotlights alumna Stacey Tevlin PhD ’95 who leads the Federal Reserve’s Research and Statistics division and is “the most important person in U.S. economics that you have probably never heard of.” Tevlin’s team is entrusted with “the forecasts for policy makers as they weigh interest rates every six weeks,” writes Torres.
MIT scientists have demonstrated a plastic polymer cable that can transmit data 10 times as fast as USB, reports Payal Dhar for IEEE Spectrum. “For newer standards aiming at much higher data rates, we see the cables getting much thicker, more expensive, and commonly short [because of] technical challenges,” says Prof. Ruonan Han. “We hope this research could [enable] much higher speed for our needs.”
AP reporter Jake Goodrick spotlights alumnus John Mansell’s commitment to advancing treatments aimed at reducing pain. His goal is to anything we can do to reduce suffering,” Mansell says. “What we’re doing here is trying to take mechanisms that fight where your body overdoes it.”
Forbes contributor Mary Juetten spotlights how a group of MIT alumni recently published a book, “Points of You,” which chronicles some of the struggles youths often face as they enter adulthood. “In this book we aimed to share real and unfiltered accounts of what we wish we’d known while growing up,” says Minha Fahmi ’19. “By presenting the perspectives of four very different people, we hope that teenagers and young adults can find understanding and new points of view.”
Forbes contributor Arun Shastri spotlights alumnus Fred Davis’ work developing the Technology Acceptance Model as part of his MIT dissertation. “It’s one of the most widely cited papers in the field of technology acceptance (a.k.a. adoption),” writes Shastri. “Since 1989, it’s spawned an entire field of research that extends and adds to it.”
Alumna Vanessa Nadal SB ’04 has co-created a new course at the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University dedicated to cosmetics regulations. In the first-of-its-kind course, which she is also co-teaching, Nadal “dives into the science of skin ("because you need to know what you are regulating," she says), the history of cosmetics laws, and the deeply misunderstood realm of how federal agencies do — and don't — keep it all together,” writes Tessa Petak for InStyle.