Lecturer Susan Murcott and graduate student Imane Ait Mbiriq speak with Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel of GBH’s Morning Edition about the MIT Climate Clock, a creation from the D-Lab that will be projected on the Green Building through May 27. “Our overall vision is that we have climate clocks in every K-12 school, in every university campus in the United States and even in the world, so that people can wake up to the reality of this new age and take action,” says Murcott.
MIT President L. Rafael Reif and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry discussed the urgency of addressing climate change during the Climate Grand Challenges Showcase event, reports Chris Lisinski for the State House News Service. “Climate change has been called a ‘super wicked’ problem. In Boston, that might sound like a local way of saying ‘really hard,’ but this phrase is actually a technical term,” Reif said. “It describes any enormously complex societal problem that has no single right answer and no clear finish line as well as multiple stakeholders with conflicting priorities and no central authority empowered to solve it.”
Bloomberg News reporter Janet Wu speaks with President L. Rafael Reif and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry during the Institute’s Climate Grand Challenges showcase event. “If you can capture the emissions -- literally, genuinely -- then you’re reducing the problem,” said Kerry of the importance of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.
Boston Magazine’s Spencer Buell highlights the MIT Banana Lounge, a student-run operation that provides free bananas and also serves as a multi-functional meeting space for the community. “Of course, this being MIT, the students have totally optimized their free-tropical-fruit operation to get it down to (what else?) a science,” writes Buell. “Their commitment to smart banana storage and analysis of supply chains, not to mention documenting the merits of bananas over, say, apples, is truly something to behold. More data is involved than you would think.”
MIT announced five projects "targeting the world's toughest climate riddles" that were selected following a rigorous two-year competition, reports Benjamin Kail for Boston Business Journal. “Climate Grand Challenges represents a whole-of-MIT drive to develop game-changing advances to confront the escalating climate crisis, in time to make a difference,” says President L. Rafael Reif.
Chiamaka Agbasi-Porter, the K-12 STEM outreach coordinator for Lincoln Lab, speaks with CBS Boston about her mission to help inspire young people to pursue STEM interests through the Lincoln Laboratory Radar Introduction for Student Engineers (LLRISE) program. “I think of it as a community,” said Agbasi-Porter, “we are a village that is helping our kids advance and move forward in their careers.”
Provost Cynthia Barnhart PhD ’88 reflects on her time as chancellor and her new role at MIT with Jennifer Ai of The Tech. “I really do want to help members of our community thrive here at MIT, because if they thrive, MIT thrives,” says Barnhart. “That very much motivates how I think things must be.”
Sasha Horokh and Vlada Petrusenko, undergraduate students from Ukraine, shared their fears with Jim Braude on Greater Boston, and asked Americans for support. “They’re staying in Ukraine, trying to stay calm and just do what they can to protect Ukraine,” Horokh said of their family and friends. “They definitely are scared for their futures, for their loved ones’ futures, for the future of their country and their home. However, being scared isn’t going to help much.”
Undergraduate Vlada Petrusenko speaks with Peter Eliopoulos of WCVB-TV about her worries for her parents and friends during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "It’s not just war of Russia against Ukraine, it’s war of Russia against the whole other world," said Petrusenko.
MIT students from Ukraine spoke with Drew Karedes of Boston 25 about their reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “I would hope for other countries to get involved,” said second year student Vlada Petrusenko. “This is actually terrifying to see how things are moving forward.”
Undergraduate Artem Laptiev joined Morning Edition to discuss the Russian invasion of his home country of Ukraine and his fears over the fate of his country. Ukraine is a “beautiful place of culture, of such rich culture and such a strong technological power,” said Laptiev. “All of my best experiences of my life were connected to Ukraine. It’s really hard to convey this with words.”
Writing for Science, Prof. Gang Chen emphasizes the need for universities and funding agencies to stand up for faculty who are wrongfully prosecuted. “What gave me hope and ultimately saved me is a lesson for all universities. MIT leadership, under President L. Rafael Reif, supported me morally and financially after I was detained at the airport, and the university made its support public soon after I was arrested,” writes Chen. He adds, “I urge university leaders, trustees, and alumni associations to protect their faculty from a campaign that is misdirected. The talent loss and terror lobbed upon faculty are weakening their institutions, supporting harmful bias, and ruining lives.”
Jim Axelrod of CBS News speaks with Professor Gang Chen about his ordeal following charges he faced – all now dismissed – under the “China Initiative.” Describing the accusations against Chen as “a massive jolt,” President L. Rafael Reif said, “I felt it was an attack on all Chinese Americans in America, particularly in academia.” Added Chen, a U.S. citizen for more than two decades, “We thought we had achieved the American Dream. Until this nightmare happened.”
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.”
President L. Rafael Reif, who bolstered MIT’s stature "as a hub of tech innovation,” is stepping down at the end of 2022, reports the AP. "His achievements include the creation of a new business incubator in 2016 to help scholars turn big ideas into companies,” writes the AP. “In 2018, he announced a $1 billion investment in artificial intelligence and computing, centered around a new College of Computing that aims to apply AI technology across all academic disciplines.”