“One of the biggest names in aerospace is coming to MIT’s front door,” writes Boston Globe reporter Tim Logan, explaining that Boeing will lease space in one of the buildings MIT is developing in Kendall Square. “We want to bring corporate partners to the edge of our campus to facilitate stronger and deeper interactions with our community,” says Provost Martin Schmidt.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will visit MIT this Friday “to headline the annual meeting of the school's Solve initiative,” reports the Associated Press. Trudeau’s appearance at Solve, which “connects tech entrepreneurs with leaders in government, business and academia to tackle world problems,” will mark his first visit to Cambridge since becoming prime minister.
In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, Alex Amouyel, executive director of MIT Solve, explains how the initiative is ‘crowdsolving’ thorny global problems through open innovation. “We need to source ideas from innovators all around the world to find the next breakthroughs,” argues Amouyel. “We know talent and ingenuity exist everywhere.”
Prof. Duane Boning, faculty co-director of MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, talks to Forbes contributor Jim Lawton about preparing future leaders and workplace learning in the digital age. “The LGO model,” says Boning, “gives students a different way of thinking about their roles.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a “kirigami” film, based off of the ancient paper-folding technique of the same name, that can be used for bandaging tricky areas like the knee or elbow, writes David Grossman for Popular Mechanics. “We are the first group to find, with a systematic mechanism study, that a kirigami design can improve a material’s adhesion,” says postdoc and lead researcher Ruike Zhao.
Prof. Zach Hartwig and Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, discuss the new fusion initiative live on Bloomberg Radio (beginning at 34:40) with hosts Peter Barnes, Tom Moroney and Pat Carroll. "MIT brings 40 years of federally funded expertise in physics to contribute to the project," said Hartwig, "and we see that as a tremendous strength of this new kind of model."
MIT will partner with Commonwealth Fusion Systems in an effort to make fusion power a reality in 15 years. “MIT and CFS are hoping to facilitate a leap forward on several of these problems at once with a new superconducting material that will help make more efficient magnets to control the plasma,” Eric Limer writes for Popular Mechanics.
Lecturer Luis Perez-Breva writes for Quartz about why most retail corporations’ definition of AI is flawed. “'AI' is at its best when we program it to address problems that are hard for humans; when not used to upskill humans, however, all it does is shift work from employees to customers,” Perez-Breva writes.
AI leader SenseTime is the first company to join the MIT Intelligence Quest since its launch, writes Xinhua editor Xiang Bo. “As the largest provider of AI algorithms in China, we are very excited to work with MIT to lead global AI research into the next frontier,” said Xu Li, CEO of SenseTime.
Ministry of Supply, which was founded out of MIT, is launching a new line of “intelligent outerwear” that will feature a jacket that can be warmed from your smartphone. "We think technology should just blend into the background and be simple to use,” cofounder and president Gihan Amarasiriwardena ’11 told Janelle Nanos of the Boston Globe.
“The MIT Intelligence Quest or MIT IQ, based at an institution that has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence research since the 1950s, is a far-reaching academic effort to regain the initiative in AI,” writes Clive Cookson for The Financial Times.
Reporting for the PBS NewsHour, Nsikan Akpan spotlights Prof. Kripa Varanasi’s work developing the non-stick coating technology LiquiGlide. Akpan also examines how Varanasi’s group is studying how to, “stop clogs at desalination water facilities by observing how saltwater evaporates, or they’re keeping water from condensing on steam turbines to improve energy efficiency at power plants.”
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Visiting Lecturer Irving Wladawsky-Berger spotlights MIT’s AI and the Future of Work Conference. Wladawsky-Berger writes that participants, “generally agreed that AI will have a major impact on jobs and the very nature of work. But, for the most part, they viewed AI as mostly augmenting rather than replacing human capabilities.”
MIT spinout Ginkgo Bioworks has not only maintained its founding members, but also recently raised $275 million from investors, writes Matthew Herper for Forbes. Herper predicts that excitement surrounding synthetic biology companies will continue because “private money is getting excited about the idea of designing biology.”
CBS Boston spotlights how Portal Instruments, an MIT startup, is bringing a needle-free injector to the market, which could change the way people take medicine. The device, “fires a pressurized spray to penetrate the skin, instead of piercing the skin with traditional needles.”