Boston Globe reporter Chris Reify writes that Professor Sangeeta Bhatia has been awarded the 2014 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. “Dr. Bhatia is a wonderful example of a woman who has used her brilliance, skill and creativity to radically improve the detection and treatment of serious global health issues,” says Dorothy Lemelson, Lemelson Foundation chair.
NBC News reports that MIT Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT prize for her work designing miniaturized biomedical tools. "As innovations emerge, we're constantly asking whether they can be repurposed for one of the two diseases we concentrate on: liver disease and cancer,” says Bhatia.
In a piece for The Guardian about Apple CEO Tim Cook, Dominic Rushe writes about a new book co-authored by MIT Professor Michael Cusumano that examines what happens to companies after they lose leaders. "There's no reason Apple can't be an extraordinarily successful company but it will be a different one," Cusumano says.
In a piece for Forbes, Josh Wolfe interviews Prof. Edward Boyden about his work with optogenetics and his new research at MIT. “I’m very excited about these new kinds of microscopes that we’re building that allow you to map all the neural activity in a complete organism,” says Boyden of his current work.
In a piece for Finance & Development, the International Monetary Fund’s quarterly magazine, Carmen Rollins highlights 25 economists influencing the global economy. The list includes five MIT faculty members: Esther Duflo, Amy Finkelstein, Kristin Forbes, Parag Pathak and Iván Werning.
Erika Fry writes for Fortune about the spread of infectious diseases, highlighting a study by researchers from MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering that examines how infectious diseases could spread worldwide through air transportation. The researchers developed a metric to rank and predict which U.S. airports would be the most influential spreaders of a disease.
The Wall Street Journal interviews Professor Sara Seager about her research and her search for extraterrestrial life. "We haven't been able to find the true Earth twin yet because it's so very hard to find. It's like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack," says Seager.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Professor John Deutch writes about the success of President Obama’s energy policy. “President Obama is having greater success in advancing his energy agenda in his second term than in his first. But it will take more than one successful term to secure the country's energy future,” Deutch writes.
In a segment about America’s renewed involvement in Iraq on NPR’s On Point, Professor Barry Posen speaks about his new book “Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy.” Posen argues that the United States should rethink its foreign policy and exercise a more conservative military approach in Iraq.
Chris Berdik of The Boston Globe interviews Professor David Wilson about his proposal in the 1970s to implement a fossil fuel tax. “I started calculating this fossil fuel tax, and I realized that with the amount we use in this country, there would obviously be a vast flow of money into the government where people would do silly things with it,” says Wilson.
“Nancy L. Rose PhD ‘85, a professor of applied economics at MIT, has been named Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economic Analysis by the U.S. Department of Justice,” writes Katherine Nazemi for The Tech. Rose will head the DOJ’s anti-trust division.
“The MIT Sloan School of Management announced on Tuesday that professor Simon Johnson won a spot at the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research,” writes Natalie Kitroeff of Bloomberg Businessweek. Johnson’s appointment follows the publication of a book that he coauthored: “13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.”
Jeffrey R. Young writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education about the final report released by the Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education. Speaking of the Task Force’s recommendation to make education more modular, co-chair Sanjay Sarma says, “we see modularity becoming a key part of on-campus experiences as well.”
“[A]s an educational researcher, I believe that MIT has captured, perhaps uniquely, both the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for colleges and universities,” writes Dan Butin for The Huffington Post about a new report released by the MIT Task Force on the Future of MIT Education.
Bloomberg News reporter Kelly Blessing writes about the final report produced by the Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education. “The Task Force encourages MIT to evaluate possibilities to achieve increases in undergraduate class size so that more students can experience the rich magic of an MIT residential education,” the Task Force wrote in their report.