Alumni/ae

MIT alumnus Dave Smith speaks with Anthony Brooks of WBUR about his company, LiquiGlide. LiquiGlide makes a substance that coats the surface on the inside of containers, reducing friction and allowing fluids to slide out more easily.

MIT alumnus Noam Angrist and seniors Anisha Gururaj and Elliot H. Akama-Garren were among 32 Rhodes scholars selected from the U.S. this year, reports Jennifer Smith for The Boston Globe. “The American scholars will join an international group of students chosen from 14 other global jurisdictions, according to the Rhodes Trust,” Smith reports. 

Two MIT seniors and alumnus Noam Angrist have been named Rhodes Scholars, reports Dave Collins for the Associated Press. “It’s a total dream come true,” says Angrist. “The skills I will get at (Oxford) are just incredible, and I’ll come back into the world fully equipped to do what I love to do.”

NPR’s Lynn Neary writes about the life and legacy of MIT alumnus Tom Magliozzi, who along with his brother, Ray, became famous for their NPR program Car Talk. “They liked to act like they were just a couple of regular guys who happened to be mechanics, but both of them graduated from MIT,” writes Neary. 

Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Chawkins writes about Tom Magliozzi, an MIT alumnus and co-host of NPR’s Car Talk, highlighting the MIT commencement address Magliozzi delivered with his brother in 1999. "I became a bum," said Magliozzi of the period in his life after he quit his job as an engineer. "I spent two years in Harvard Square drinking coffee."

Washington Post reporter Adam Bernstein writes about Tom Magliozzi, an MIT alumnus and co-host of the popular NPR program Car Talk, who passed away at age 77. “As youngsters, Tom and Ray, who is 12 years his junior, conducted science experiments in the back yard and enjoyed tinkering with their father’s Depression-era car,” writes Bernstein. 

“Wielding his unmistakable laughter as ably he would a wrench, Tom Magliozzi hosted NPR’s “Car Talk” for 35 years with his brother, Ray, instructing and entertaining millions,” writes Boston Globe reporter Bryan Marquard of MIT alumnus Tom Magliozzi, who passed away Monday. 

MIT alumnus Tom Magliozzi ‘58, co-host of Car Talk on NPR, has died at 77. In a remembrance on WBUR, Bruce Gellerman highlights a clip from Magliozzi’s 1999 commencement speech at MIT, where he used the speech to elaborate on his famous “theory of life.”

Howard Husock writes for Forbes about Khan Academy, a platform created by MIT alumnus Salman Khan that hosts free courses online. “Our goal is for Khan Academy’s software and content to be the best possible learning experience and for it to be for everyone, for free, forever,” said Khan.

Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes about the symposium held in honor of the 100th anniversary of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, highlighting SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s talk. Musk said that investment in becoming a “multi-planet” species is crucial to the future of humanity.

Scott Kirsner of BetaBoston highlights Anne Hunter’s jobs list, which has connected MIT students and alumni to potential employers since the 1990s. “The ‘jobs list’ is an MIT institution, a mailing list that any student can ask to get onto,” says alumni Michael McGraw-Herdeg. “Anne is a saint for having set the list up — I am sure it has changed lives.”

Sacha Pfeiffer of WBUR speaks with Jonathan Eig, the author of a new book on the history of birth control, about the role of MIT alumna Katherine McCormick in the development of the birth control pill. McCormick, a pioneer of the women's suffrage movement, funded much of the research that led to the creation of the pill.

Ian King of Bloomberg Businessweek profiles MIT alumna Lisa Su, the first female CEO of Advanced Micro Devices. Su elected to attend MIT for her doctorate, master’s and bachelor’s degrees as “it was the most difficult challenge she could find” and went on to work for “most of the biggest names in the U.S. semiconductor business,” writes King. 

Jean Tirole, an MIT alumnus and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, speaks with Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times about his research on government regulation. Tirole explains that he began his research in the field as a graduate student at MIT. 

An anonymous donor gave $2.5 million to illuminate the Harvard Bridge stretching across the Charles River from Boston to the MIT campus, writes Nestor Ramos for The Boston Globe. The distance between light poles will be measured in Smoots, a unit of measurement created by MIT student Oliver Smoot in 1958.