Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E)

Writing for Bloomberg News, Prof. Carlo Ratti and Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute make the case that cities should use venture capital strategies to manage risk and spur innovation. “To do so, local governments need to change their approach to procurement,” they write. “If administrators pay more close attention to what venture capital can teach them, then the city — one of the first, greatest ventures in human history — will be able to continue to invest in a shared, prosperous tomorrow.”

Prof. Hari Balakrishnan speaks with Forbes contributor Stuart Anderson about his decision to leave India to pursue a PhD in computer science in the U.S., his love for teaching students as a professor at MIT and his work co-founding Cambridge Mobile Telematics, a software company that utilizes technology to make roads safer. “Immigration and immigrants make the United States stronger,” said Balakrishnan. “Immigration is the biggest strength that we have. We need to be able to attract and retain talent, no matter where people come from.”

MIT and Harvard startup GiveDirectly, “identifies poor people and villages, usually in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and distributes cash to them directly, usually via cellphone payment, instead of donations like food and livestock,” reports Dylan Matthews for Vox.

Writing for The Hill, President L. Rafael Reif and Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman, CEO & co-founder of Blackstone, praise the new “CHIPS and Science Act” and highlight the need for further action on the ‘Science’ part of the law. “We urge Congress to capitalize on this bipartisan momentum and appropriate the funds that the bill authorizes,” they write. The nation's "future competitiveness, prosperity and security all rely on technological leadership. To sustain its strength in the long term, the U.S. needs to invent and manufacture the next new technologies.”

Gradiant, an MIT startup founded by Anurag Bajpayee PhD ’12, S.M. ‘08 and Prakash Govindan PhD ’12, has developed an energy efficient system that purifies water by mimicking natural rainfall cycles, reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “Nature has the advantage of having all the surface area of the oceans available freely and a free source of energy from the sun,” Govindan said. “We have to engineer this into a compact, highly efficient, and energy-efficient industrial device.”

Quaise Energy co-founder Carlos Araque BS ’01 MS ’02 speaks with Guy Raz, host of NPR’s How I Built This, about his time on the MIT Electric Vehicle Team, starting his company and the future of geothermal energy. “We would build these cars together, literally from scratch,“ said Araque about the EVT. "Very hands on, a lot of engineering went into that. And it [offered] very early experience with building things that work -- not only work, but work reliantly and consistently.”  

Mark Lee MS ’94 spoke with Forbes reporter Karen Walker about the success of Splashtop, a company he co-founded that is developing cloud-based software that allows secure and remote access and support.

Butlr, spinout founded by researchers from the MIT Media Lab, is developing sensors that utilize body heat to estimate office occupancy, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. The new technology “uses thermal sensing AI to provide data on space occupancy and historical activity,” writes Wiggers.

Alumni Mahmoud Ghulman and Aziz Alghunaim co-founded Nash, a platform that allows businesses to select specific delivery providers based on price and availability, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “By removing the technical, logistical, and operational overhead associated with offering a reliable delivery experience, Nash helped hundreds of businesses access new customers and revenue streams,” says Ghulman.

Ifueko Igbinedion PhD ’22, Marlyse Reeves PhD ’22 and Wharton alumni Isoken Igbinedion, and Simone Kendle founded Parfait, a company that uses technology to more efficiently design and create wigs, reports Ron Miller for TechCrunch. “The four women have built a solution that lets women simply choose a wig and answer a series of questions to come up with the final design,” explains Miller. “They have mixed this with machine learning to help with sizing and proper tinting, while bringing in human stylists to make the final decisions when needed.”

Fast Company reporter Nate Berg spotlights the work of Liminal, a non-profit research group developed by students from MIT and Harvard that is focused on sustainable development in small towns. “Liminal brought 18 architecture and urbanism students from MIT to Abruzzo for a three-week immersion in the region,” writes Berg, “to learn about local priorities and develop design visions for the future of its small towns.”

The MIT Media Lab hosted the “Imagination in Action Web3 Summit,” which brought togethers entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders who believe we are on the verge of a tech revolution, reports Anissa Gardizy for The Boston Globe.

Research affiliate Jason Prapas founded Fyto, a company dedicated to developing hardware and software to automate and scale the production of aquatic plants, reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch. Prapas says that “Fyto’s technology taps into a farm’s waste streams as inputs to enable farmers to increase productivity and improve nutrient management while reducing production costs, water usage and greenhouse gas emissions, in some operations by over 50%.”

Francis Plaza ’13 co-founded PayMongo, a fintech firm designed to digitalize the Philippine’s cash-based economy, reports Catherine Wang for Forbes. “PayMongo now not only plans to expand beyond the Philippines to other Southeast Asian countries, but also to broaden its remit by becoming a platform for scaling small business in the region,” writes Wang. 

Alumnus Andrew Lau co-founded Jellyfish, an engineering management software platform designed to assess contextual business data and engineering signals to promote transparency into how engineering organizations work and operate, reports Bruce Rogers for Forbes. “We know leading a large engineering team is hard, not because necessarily of the coding, it's actually the intersection of technology and the business” says Lau.