Industry

Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto spotlights how MIT President Sally Kornbluth is “determined to harness MIT’s considerable brainpower to tackle” climate change. During a clean-tech entrepreneurship event hosted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, Kornbluth highlighted the newly announced Climate Project at MIT, “which commits $75 million and dozens of faculty to solving some of the biggest climate problems.” Kornbluth also noted that MIT’s “culture of entrepreneurship” makes the Institute uniquely positioned to help address the challenges posed by climate change.

Yuly Fuentes-Medel, program director for textiles in the MIT Fabric Innovation Hub, speaks with Washington Post reporter Daliah Singer about the need for a more sustainable shoe industry. “You don’t want to consider your shoe something you’re going to throw away, and that’s a long-term change,” says Fuentes-Medel. “It’s a mental model that needs to change for us to keep building all the products of the future.”

Prof. Emeritus Donald Sadoway co-founded Boston Metal, an MIT startup that has developed a carbon-free steel manufacturing process, reports Amy Feldman for Forbes. “Boston Metal’s process – which uses an electricity conducting, molten-metal proof anode to liquify iron ore, separating the pure metal without harmful byproducts – allows factories to create carbon-free steel as long as they use a clean energy source, such as hydroelectric power,” explains Feldman. “It also can create steel from lower-grade ores rather than relying on scarce high-grade ones. That’s an important advantage in terms of both cost and availability compared to other methods of making green steel, according to the company.”

Writing for Financial Times, economist Ann Harrison spotlights research by Prof. Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo PhD '16 and Prof. David Autor, that explores the impact of automation on jobs in the United States. Acemoglu and Restrepo have “calculated that each additional robot in the US eliminates 3.3 workers” and that “most of the increase in inequality is due to workers who perform routine tasks being hit by automation,” writes Harrison.

Researchers from the MIT Self-Assembly Lab have developed a 4D-knit dress that uses “heat-activated yarn that allows its shape and fit to be altered in an instant,” reports Rima Sabina Aouf for Dezeen. Prof. Skylar Tibbits notes that by having “one dress that can be customized for fit and style, it can be perfectly tailored to the individual while being more sustainable and adaptable to changes in season, style or inventory.”

A more than $40 million investment to add advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities to MIT.nano will significantly expand the center’s nanofabrication capabilities, reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe. The new equipment, which will also be available to scientists outside MIT, will allow “startups and students access to wafer-making equipment used by larger companies. These tools will allow its researchers to make prototypes of an array of microelectronic devices.”

Fast Company reporter Adele Peters spotlights Boston Metal – an MIT startup that uses electrolysis to heat iron ore and create liquid steel without releasing carbon emissions. “If the process runs on renewable energy, the steel is zero-emissions,” explains Peters. “The same technique can be used to extract other valuable metals from mining waste.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a cathode, the negatively-charged part of an EV lithium-ion battery, using “small organic molecules instead of cobalt,” reports Hannah Northey for Energy Wire. The organic material, "would be used in an EV and cycled thousands of times throughout the car’s lifespan, thereby reducing the carbon footprint and avoiding the need to mine for cobalt,” writes Northey. 

Prof. Julie Shah speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Weber about the implementation of automation in the work force. According to Shah, “when companies adopt automation successfully, they end up adding workers as they become more productive and fill more orders,” writes Weber. “And machines’ lack of flexibility has often resulted in what Shah calls ‘zero-sum automation,’ where gains in productivity are canceled out by the need for people to fix or reprogram robots and compensate for their drawbacks.” 

ClimateWire reporter John Fialka writes that MIT engineers have developed a new process to convert carbon dioxide into a powder that can be safely stored for decades. “The MIT process gets closer to an ambitious dream: turning captured CO2 into a feedstock for clean fuel that replaces conventional batteries and stores electricity for months or years,” writes Fialka. “That could fill gaps in the nation's power grids as they transition from fossil fuels to intermittent solar and wind energy.”

MIT researchers have devised a new carbon capture system that “relies on the reaction between CO2 in flue gas and a fine mist of electrically charged particles,” reports Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. The researchers believe their design could be “95 per cent efficient at capturing carbon dioxide, while measuring less than 4 meters long,” Padavic-Callaghan notes. “Their analysis also showed that the approach would reduce capital costs of adding carbon capture to power plants by about 2.6 times compared with current technology.”

MIT AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin speaks with New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo about why the tech industry tends to ignore older people. “The market is aging,” says Coughlin. “The market is numerous. The market has got more money than the people they have been building products for.”

Fortune has named Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine, as one of the top 13 seed stage, climate tech VCs to watch, reports Lucy Brewster for Fortune. “Rae tops venture firm The Engine, which beyond being a fund, is an investing arm that spun out of MIT,” explains Brewster. “Yet Rae invests in an array of companies and sources founders from beyond just university walls.”

In a letter to the editor of The Economist, Prof. David Autor makes the case that while pursuing industrial policy has substantial risks, “forswearing industrial policy has equally many risks, especially when our chief economic and strategic competitors are currently using it to great effect.”

Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with Marketplace host Meghan McCarty Carino about how AI has impacted the workplace, highlighting the wide deployment of robots in warehouses. “Instead of people running around the warehouses, the people stand and the robots run around the warehouses,” Sheffi said. “But they bring the work to the people who then put it in boxes, package them.”