Business and management

According to the U.S. News & World Report rankings for 2025-2026, MIT has been named the No. 2 best university in the United States, reports Madison Lucchesi for Boston.com. 

Edward Woodford SM '15 founded Zerohash, a crypto and stablecoin infrastructure company, aimed at helping “financial institutions and fintechs build out their own products for stablecoins, crypto trading, and tokenization,” reports Ben Weiss for Fortune. “Over eight years, Woodford has managed to ride multiple crypto booms and busts,” writes Weiss. “It’s not just that we’re a survivor,” says Woodford. “We’ve actually thrived in that market, and actually now, I think we can accelerate that even further.”

MIT has been named the second best university in the United States, according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings for 2025-2026, reports Alan Blinder for The New York Times. 

U.S. News & World Report has named MIT the number two best university in the United States for 2025-2026, reports Emily Sweeney for The Boston Globe. The rankings “evaluated more than 1,700 colleges and universities in the United States, using up to 17 measures of academic quality and graduate success,” adds Sweeney. 

MIT has been named the number two college in the United States in U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking, reports Alia Shoaib for Newsweek. “U.S. News & World Report ranks more than 1,700 colleges using a weighted formula that considers factors such as graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, academic reputation, financial resources and student selectivity,” explains Shoaib. 

Boon Uranukul PhD '19 co-founded Terra Oleo, a startup working to “develop microbes that can transform agricultural waste into a variety of oils,” reports Tim De Chant for TechCrunch. “The company selected three yeast species based on the microbes’ abilities to produce certain oils when fed with organic waste, including from agriculture and biodiesel production,” explains de Chant. “It then used genetic and metabolic engineering to boost and tune their ability to produce certain fats and triglycerides.” 

MIT’s Sloan School of Management has been recognized as one of the top ten best MBA programs in the world, according to LinkedIn’s 2025 rankings, reports Kamaron McNahir for CNBC. 

Prof. Thomas Kochan speaks with GBH reporter Craig LeMoult about the recent Market Basket’s leadership dispute. “The reality is Market Basket is a community asset,” says Kochan. “People value it because it provides good service, good prices, good jobs. And the public is hungry for a company like that. And they demonstrated that in 2014 when the first episode occurred and everyone rallied around the employees who rallied their CEO.” 

Prof. Catherine Wolfram speaks with Financial Times reporter Simon Mundy about the EU’s decision to begin applying the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) next year. “I’m not sure the Europeans quite realize just how powerful the CBAM was as an incentive for other countries to adopt carbon pricing,” says Wolfram. “It’s really started a global conversation.” 

A working paper by MIT researchers has found “that the most successful generative AI deployments consistently involve frontline workers from the earliest stages through rollout,” reports Sharon Wu for USA Today. The researchers “demonstrate that when employees help define the problem, co-design workflows, experiment with tools, and shape fair transition policies, not only does adoption improve, but worker productivity and job quality also rise.” 

In an effort to help “build the tools and talent to shape a more productive and sustainable future for manufacturing,” MIT has launched the Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM), reports Nathan Owens for Manufacturing Dive. Owens explains that to help accelerate technology adoption and manufacturing productivity, the INM has "mapped out a series of education and industry partnership programs, including plans to establish new labs and a 'factory observation' effort that allows students to visit production sites.”

Prof. Simon Johnson speaks with Wired reporter Paresh Dave about the financial and social cost of AI implantation in the workforce, making the case that governments should lower payroll taxes for entry-level roles to encourage hiring and help humans build careers. “The right lever to pull is one that reduces costs to employers,” says Johnson.  

Aman Narang '04, Meng '06, co-founder of Toast, has been named one of the 2025 Boston Globe Tech Power Players for his work in the software and cloud sector, reports Aiden Ryan for The Boston Globe. 

Sloan lecturer Mikey Shulman, Colin Angle '89, SM '90, Tye Brady SM '99, Laira Major SM '05, Dharmesh Shah SM '06 have been named to the 2025 Boston Globe Tech Power Players list for their work in the applied AI sector, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. 

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. David Mindell spotlights how “a new wave of industrial companies, many in New England, are leveraging new technologies to create jobs, empower workers, and address climate change.” Mindell notes that “young Americans — new industrialists — are devoting themselves to making things for the common good.” He adds: "The country needs this generation of builders who are excited about working with their hands, about the satisfactions of building the world, and who see that work as building our communities.”