TechCrunch reporter Danny Crichton writes that The Engine has announced a second round of funding aimed at supporting tough tech startups. Crichton notes that, “with this latest news from The Engine, it seems clear that Boston’s tough tech ecosystem will continue to have a pipeline of interesting and compelling companies.”
Cometeer, an MIT startup, offers a new way to deliver and consume craft coffee at home, reports Elizabeth Segran for Fast Company. The coffee arrives in the form of frozen pucks to help "retain all the complex flavors of the bean, as if a coffee expert had brewed it for you.”
Popular Mechanics reporter Jim Allen explores what inspired Amar Bose ’51, SM ’52, ScD ’56, a former member of the MIT faculty and the founder of Bose Corporation, to develop noise cancelling headphones.
New York Times reporter Steve Lohr highlights the technology startup Ultranauts, which was founded by two MIT graduates and follows a “distinctive set of policies and practices to promote diversity and inclusion among employees.”
Writing for Wired, Ash Carter, an innovation fellow at the MIT Innovation Initiative, spotlights a number of “technologists, activists, and policymakers who are thoughtfully creating and using technology in ways to protect the public good and help shape a better future.”
Fast Company reporter Steven Melendez spotlights Minglr, an open-source tool that is aimed at connecting attendees at virtual conferences for brief video conversations. “If you’re in a group like a conference, one thing people might do is contact people they know,” says Prof. Thomas Malone. “Other people could contact people they have heard of but not met.”
Writing for Forbes, Pooja Wagh of MIT Solve examines how the Covid-19 pandemic has “highlighted the urgency of human-centric innovations in global health and the need for those solutions to be driven by the communities they serve.”
Engine CEO Katie Rae speaks with Arielle Pardes of Wired about the need to invest in companies that are tackling the world’s most urgent problems. “We back transformational technology that could shape a market and solve a huge world problem all in a go,” says Rae. “But it requires patience, it requires capital and it requires imagination on how to get these types of companies to market.”
Quartz reporter Ananya Bhattacharya spotlights a new study co-authored by Prof. Pierre Azoulay that examines the role of immigration in entrepreneurship, and finds that immigrants in the U.S. act more as “job creators” than as “job takers.”
WHDH spotlights MIT startup E25Bio, which is developing a new rapid test to diagnose Covid-19. The test being developed by E25Bio is a paper strip that can deliver test results in 15 minutes, WHDH explains.
President L. Rafael Reif joins Alan Alda on his podcast “Clear + Vivid” to discuss the need for increased American investment in fundamental research and development.
The Economist spotlights a recent essay by Prof. David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds, executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the state of work. “If remote working proves a lasting shift, then the café staff, taxi drivers and cleaners who depend on their custom could find themselves out of work,” writes The Economist.
Reporting for USA Today, Karen Weintraub spotlights how researchers from MIT and 3M are collaborating on a rapid, low-cost diagnostic test for Covid-19. "The world needs as many useful tests as possible as fast as possible," says Prof. Hadley Sikes.
TechCrunch reporter Zach Whittaker writes about Butlr, an MIT startup that has developed passive infrared sensors that use a “mix of wireless, battery-powered hardware and artificial intelligence to track people’s movements indoors without violating their privacy.”
Architects from MIT and Generate Technologies have designed Boston’s first cross-laminated timber (CLT) building, a “’revolutionary’ type of timber [that] promises to reduce emissions that cause climate change, create affordable housing and jumpstart a new job-producing, homegrown industry in New England,” reports Bruce Gellerman and Kathleen McNerney for WBUR.