In an article for The Huffington Post, Prof. Nicholas Ashford writes about the importance of considering alternatives to toxic chemicals early in the regulatory process. “An early and serious examination of alternatives to suspect chemicals would not only accelerate the regulation of potentially harmful chemicals, it would also stimulate innovation in products and processes,” Ashford notes.
As part of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s special section on tech innovators, Jeffrey Young spotlights the work of Sanjay Sarma, vice president for open learning. Young writes that Sarma is transforming higher education “by pushing the lecture model into the margins and using technology to rethink the professor’s role.”
Prof. Tavneet Suri writes for The Huffington Post that text messages can improve civic engagement in developing countries, if the electoral system is perceived as fair. “While it’s clear that get-out-the-vote text messages have enormous potential to increase civic engagement and participation, it’s also clear that these messages carry an implicit promise of transparency and openness,” writes Suri.
Scott Malone of Reuters writes that Prof. Lester Thurow, a former dean of MIT Sloan, has died at age 77. Malone writes that Thurow’s, “policy recommendations focused on promoting education and long-term investment in companies and economies.”
Former Sloan School of Management Dean Lester Thurow has died at age 77, the Associated Press reports. “Thurow became a leading public voice in examining the defining features of globalization, including the competitiveness of national economies at a time of industrial change, and worker welfare.”
Prof. Emeritus Lester Thurow, a former dean of MIT Sloan who was known for his research on income inequality, died on March 25, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Marquard notes that Thurow “addressed topics that resonate as loudly in today’s political debates as they did when he was a professor and dean.”
New York Times reporter John Koblin highlights the work of Prof. Lester Thurow, a former dean of MIT Sloan and a prominent economist, who died on March 25. “He was one of the first important economists to suggest that too much inequality is bad for society,” said Jared Bernstein, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
In this Huffington Post interview with Andrew McAfee, co-founder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Prof. Neri Oxman speaks about the complex relationship between humans and nature. “We think about new ways of making things... using new technologies that are inspired or informed by nature,” says Oxman of her group’s work.
In an article for The New York Times, Nelson Schwartz highlights Prof. Duncan Simester’s study examining whether people spend more money when they are using a credit card. Simester notes that, “when you vary the payment method, people are willing to pay more. You’re not forking over a dollar bill, so there is less sensation of loss.”
Prof. Feng Zhang has been named a recipient of the 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award for his work on the development of the CRISPR gene-editing system, reports CBC News. CRISPR "may prove to be a ‘powerful therapeutic’ for treating human diseases by editing out harmful genetic mutations.”
Globe and Mail reporter Ivan Semeniuk spotlights Prof. Feng Zhang and his role in developing the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system, for which he was honored as a recipient of the 2016 Canada Gairdner International award. “CRISPR genome editing technology is a really powerful platform,” says Zhang. “It think it will advance both our ability to understand disease and to develop treatments.”
CNBC reporter Robert Ferris chronicles the late Prof. Amar Bose’s quest to develop the perfect set of speakers. Ferris explains that Bose, a former faculty member at MIT and founder of the Bose Corporation, “didn't set out to sell speaker systems and headphones. He began his career as an academic engineer at MIT in the late 1950s.”
Alumna Tish Scolnik, CEO of GRIT, speaks with Justine Hofherr of Boston.com about how an MIT class inspired her career. Scolnik explains that the idea for GRIT, an MIT startup that produces wheelchairs that allows users to traverse rugged terrain, “started back at MIT as a class project.”
New York Times reporter Penelope Green speaks with Prof. Sherry Turkle about a new Facebook tool aimed at making breakups easier. “It’s not to say that Facebook shouldn’t make it easy to click that button to avoid certain painful memories,” she said. “But the reason we’re looking through those old love letters is we’re trying to work through our past.”
Prof. John Leonard speaks with Bill Littlefield of NPR’s Only A Game about a local student’s “Deflategate" experiment. Leonard says that “ultimately I think if you can explain things in very simple terms and get at the essence of a concept, that’s the best situation."