Forbes contributor Frederick Daso spotlights Fitnescity, a startup founded by MIT graduates that offers “a streamlined online platform to help consumers select lab kits, get tested, and display their data on a digital dashboard.” CEO and co-founder Laila Zemrani MBA ’13 explains that: “Fitnescity was founded to give people access to the information they need to improve their health and wellness.”
Times Higher Ed reporter writes that Rebecca Blank PhD ’83 will be the next president, and first female president, of Northwestern University. Blank said of the Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to Prof. Joshua Angrist and his colleagues: “They’ve taken on issues that are real-world problems, and told us something about them. That’s exactly what universities should be good at doing.”
Rebecca Blank PhD ’83 has been selected as the next president of Northwestern University, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. “Blank’s selection as Northwestern’s 17th president represents something of a homecoming for her,” writes Nietzel. “She served on Northwestern's economics faculty from 1989-1999, where she was named the first tenured woman in the economics department. Her appointment will establish another record - she will be Northwestern’s first woman president.”
Ayr Muir ’00, SM ’01 speaks with Washington Post reporter Trisha Pasricha about how the goal behind his plant-based restaurants, Clover Foods Labs, is to use plant-based foods to help mitigate the climate crisis. “The overarching mission is global warming. And what we’re trying to do is help meat-lovers eat more meals that have no meat in them,” Muir said. “The more success we have with that, the greater impact we have on the environment.”
Fortune reporter Nicole Gull McElroy spotlights how the MIT Innovation Initiative and the Sloan School of Management are opening Innovation HQ, a 50,000 square foot space that will house a cross-disciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship lab. “Innovation HQ will offer students, alumni, faculty and staff a place to work, collaborate and create with six departments, lab space, an innovator’s lounge and a new space for music and arts innovation called Voxel Lab,” writes McElroy.
Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Pranshu Verma about the inspiration for her startup BloomerTech, which is focused on addressing heart disease in women, and the underrepresentation of women in clinical trials. As part of this effort, BloomerTech is developing a “sensor-enabled bra that feeds real-time heart data to doctors running clinical trials on women’s cardiovascular disease.”
MIT was named the top school for positioning graduates to find a job in the QS Graduate Employability Rankings, reports August Saraiva for Bloomberg. “For the third year, MIT landed a perfect score,” writes Saraiva, “retaining its title as the best alma mater to have when looking for a job.”
Alexis Sablone ’16, a professional skateboarded who competed in the 2021 Olympics, speaks with New York Times reporter Allie Conti about how she spends a typical Sunday in New York, “where she currently builds public art projects and furniture. And skates. A lot.”
Erin Genia ‘19 a multidisciplinary artist, has been honored as one of The ARTery 25, which highlights artists of color in the Greater Boston area who stand out for the work they are making, reports WBUR. “Genia, a tribal member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of South Dakota, sees her artistic mission as one of many efforts to make up for the centuries of assimilation and cultural repression.”
Forbes reporter Aayushi Pratap spotlights Vicarious Surgical, an MIT startup and surgical robot company aimed at making “abdominal surgery faster, easier and subject to fewer complications, starting with hernia repairs.”
Oliver “Ollie” Smoot ’62 speaks with Rob Michaelson of NBC Boston about the origin and history of the Smoot, a unit of measurement created when Smoot and his friends used the length of his body to measure the bridge that brings Massachusetts Avenue from Cambridge to Boston.
New York Times reporter Steve Lohr spotlights the origin and history of MIT startup Gingko Bioworks, a synthetic biology company founded with a “shared belief that biology could be made more like computing with reusable code and standard tools instead of the bespoke experiments of traditional biology." Jason Kelly ’03, PhD ’08, one of the founders of MIT startup Ginkgo Bioworks and the company’s chief executive, explains that “the ultimate goal for Ginkgo is to make it as easy to program a cell as it is to program a computer.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Gregg Martin SM ’88, PhD ’92, a retired two-star Army general and former president of the National Defense University, shares his concern for the mental health of Afghanistan war veterans. “While most troops are justifiably proud of what they did at the tactical, local level, they’re now seeing their efforts go up in smoke,” writes Martin. “They’re angry, sad, hurting, and confused, and I fear that the mental health of some of them will unravel so unrelentingly they’ll take their own lives.”
Alumna Loewen Cavill speaks with Forbes contributor Mary Juetten about her startup AuraBlue, which is creating wearable technology aimed at improving sleep for menopausal women by automatically adjusting room and mattress temperatures. “After hearing again and again how sleep loss from nighttime hot flashes has completely flipped so many women's lives upside down, I had to do something,” says Cavill. “Enabling women to stay on their career path and perform their best at the final part of their career climb is the single most important thing I can do to promote women in leadership.”
Boston Globe reporter Pranshu Verma spotlights BitSight, a cybersecurity ratings company founded by MIT graduates. “The company’s platform uses algorithms to assess a company’s chances of being breached,” writes Verma. “It also provides customers with cybersecurity ratings, risk metrics, and security benchmarks to better assess and combat cyber threats.”