Richard Locke PhD '89, the newly appointed dean of the Sloan School of Management, speaks with Bloomberg reporter Bill Donahue about his goals for his new role and his desire to help Sloan’s “brilliant, curious students” address urgent global problems. “For me, working at a place like MIT is a completely unexpected gift,” says Locke. “Every single day, I come to work with wonder and happiness. I’m in a world that I never imagined I would ever be in.”
Writing for Nature, Bruce Allen pays tribute to Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a pioneering physicist who “spearheaded the construction of the LIGO observatory to detect Einstein’s predicted ripples in space-time [and] leaves a legacy of persistence and mentorship.” Allen recalls how, decades earlier, Weiss rejoiced in a moment of discovery with him. “This is why we do science,” Weiss said. “Not for prizes or awards — that’s all nonsense. It’s for the satisfaction when something you’ve struggled with finally works.” Weiss, Allen emphasizes, was “a scientist driven by curiosity, persistence and the joy of understanding how the Universe works.”
David Baltimore, a former Institute Professor at MIT and a Nobel laureate, has passed at the age of 87, reports Gina Kolata for The New York Times. Baltimore’s work rocked “the foundation of the fledging field of molecular biology,” writes Kolata. His “Nobel-winning discovery [upended] what was called the central dogma, which stated that information in cells flowed in only one direction — from DNA to RNA to the synthesis of proteins. Dr. Baltimore showed that information can also flow in the reverse direction, from RNA to DNA.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Mooallem memorializes the life and work of Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, from his time hacking surplus military electronics into sophisticated hi-fi receivers as a teenager to dreaming up the concept for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Mooallem notes that Weiss and his LIGO colleagues’ breakthrough in achieving the first-ever detection of gravitational waves “has provided a new way of looking at the universe, of observing, through the charting of gravity waves emitted by moving objects, what was previously unobservable or unknown—a milestone that is frequently compared with Galileo’s invention of the telescope.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with David Pogue of CBS Sunday Morning about how AI is impacting the labor market, in particular opportunities for entry-level job seekers. “My view is there is great potential and great risk,” Autor explains. “I think that it's not nearly as imminent in either direction as most people think." On the impacts for young job seekers, Autor emphasizes that “this is really a concern. Judgment, expertise, it's acquired slowly. It's possible that we could strip out so much of the supporting work, that people never get the expertise. I don't think it's an insurmountable concern. But we shouldn't take for granted that it will solve itself."
Prof. Andrew Lo speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Cheryl Winokur Munk about how AI tools could be used to help people with financial planning. Winokur Munk writes that Lo recommends providing “just enough information to get relevant answers. And leave out highly personal details like your name, address, salary, employer or specific assets…as such details put people at risk should the AI be compromised.” Lo also advises “trying several AI platforms,” writes Winokur Munk. And “the advice should be run by a professional, trusted family or friends. Be a bit skeptical and double-check with humans.”
Prof. Rainer Weiss, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose research helped “unlock the secrets of the universe,” has died at 92, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “He really is, by a large margin, the most influential person this field has seen. And will see,” said Caltech Prof. Emeritus Kip Thorne. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science who conducted her doctoral research with Weiss, shared that Weiss “worked on three different things, and every one of them has changed the way we understand physics and the universe.”
Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a “renowned experimental physicist” who was “integral in confirming the existence of tiny ripples in spacetime called ‘gravitational waves,’” has died, reports Robert Lea for Space.com. “Remarkably, in confirming the existence of gravitational waves, Weiss both proved Einstein right and wrong at the same time,” writes Lea. “Einstein had been convinced that these ripples in spacetime were so faint that no apparatus on Earth could ever be sensitive enough to detect them, showing just how revolutionary LIGO was.”
Tri-City Herald reporter Annette Cary memorializes the life and legacy of MIT Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a “renowned experimental physicist and Nobel laureate,” who was “key to [the] world’s first gravitational wave discovery.” At the opening ceremony in June 2022 for the LIGO Exploration Center in Hanford, Washington, Weiss relayed how life is more interesting if you have a deeper understanding of the world around you and “how science does its tricks.”
Physics World reporter Michael Banks chronicles the life and work of MIT Prof. Emeritus and gravitational wave pioneer Rainer Weiss. “Weiss came up with the idea of detecting gravitational waves by measuring changes in distance as tiny as 10–18 m via an interferometer several kilometers long,” writes Banks. “His proposal eventually led to the formation of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which first detected such waves in 2015.”
Writing for Nature, Prof. Danielle Wood makes the case that both public and commercial satellite missions are needed to understand and protect the environment. “Although commercial companies have much to offer, the public sector must still lead the design, operation and management of satellites, and remain committed to tracking changes on Earth comprehensively, openly and transparently,” Wood writes.
Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was honored for his work "developing a device that uses gravity to detect intergalactic events, like black holes colliding, and who helped confirm two central hypotheses about the universe,” has died at 92, reports Dylan Loeb McClain for The New York Times. In an earlier interview, Weiss reflected upon the wonder unlocked by LIGO: “With gravitational waves, you have a new way to look at [the] universe. You can see all that nature has in store. So now comes the question: What do you want to find out?”
Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL and “one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of machines and artificial intelligence,” shares her views on the promise of embodied intelligence, which would allow machines to adapt in real-time; the development of AI agents; and how the US can lead on the development of AI technologies with Aaron Mak of Politico. “The U.S. government has invested in energy grids, railroads and the internet. In the AI age, it must treat high-performance compute, data stewardship and model evaluation pipelines as public infrastructure as well,” Rus explains.
Writing for The Atlantic, Prof. Joshua Bennett explores the relationship between poetry and AI. “A large language model is a prediction machine. Crucially, it does not think or dream. It establishes the likeliest sequence of words based on its training data and relays it back to you,” writes Bennett. “A well-crafted poem performs a nearly opposite function. It is made from original, dynamic language choices, and it lives and dies on its ability to surprise. It is a means of preserving the particular.”
Prof. Carlo Ratti speaks with The Boston Globe columnist Jason Schwartz about how a proposed seven-story office building behind Fenway Park could make the beloved Green Monster wall appear a bit less monstrous. “The wall has always felt monumental not just because of its size, but because it stood against an open sky,” says Ratti. “When the backdrop becomes a building, the view compresses, and the Monster might lose some of its presence.”