The Department of Defense has formally opened its second Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) near MIT, according to the Associated Press. “The roughly year-old DIUx program is meant to help the military better identify emerging technologies.”
Curt Woodward writes for The Boston Globe that Bernadette Johnson, chief technology officer at Lincoln Laboratory, has been named the chief science officer for the Cambridge branch of the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental (DIUx). Woodward notes that the Cambridge DIUx program, is “part of a push by the Pentagon to more quickly harness innovations from the region’s tech sector.”
In a Boston Globe article about increasing interest in bio-agriculture, Robert Weisman highlights a number of MIT spinoffs, including Grove Labs and Ginkgo Bioworks. Weisman highlights the aquaponics systems Grove Labs is developing “complete with LED lighting, for growing fruit, vegetables, and herbs at home,” and how Ginkgo Bioworks is producing a “roster of ‘bio-products’ that include organic pesticides.”
Fortune reporter Jeremy Quittner writes about a new study by MIT researchers that examines why women are less likely to get VC funding than men. The researchers found that “women-owned companies do a certain amount of self-sorting into industries that are probably less risky, and so also lack high-growth potential that VCs find most attractive.”
Scarlett Ho writes for The Huffington Post about an MIT startup, fireflies.ai, aimed at helping people foster and maintain connections. “All you have to do is forward an email from the contact you wish to keep in touch with to Fireflies, set reminders, add notes, and Fireflies will adapt over time, sending meaningful insights for you.”
Hae Young Yoo writes for The Boston Globe that Ori, a spinoff out of the MIT Media Lab’s CityHome research project, “is creating furniture for urban spaces -- not just smaller pieces, but smarter ones, equipped with robotics that move on demand.”
Wired reporter Margaret Rhodes writes that Media Lab spinoff Ori is developing transformable furniture to help maximize living spaces. “With the push of a button—or, with future versions of the software, at the sound of a voice or wave of a hand—pieces of Ori furniture will slide up, down, or over, reconfiguring spaces in mere moments.”
MIT alumnus Jason Strauss’ startup creates and mails postcards based off your smartphone photos, writes Madeline Bilis for Boston Magazine. “Users text a photo to a phone number, include an address and a message, provide payment information for a $2 processing fee, and voilà, a postcard is printed and shipped,” explains Bilis.
Prof. Neil Gershenfeld speaks with Adam Shaw of BBC Horizons about how the fabrication labs he started at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms have spread around the world. Gershenfeld explains that Fab Labs “are places where ordinary people can go and they can turn data into things and things into data,” adding that they are part of the maker revolution.
Prof. Vladimir Bulović, associate dean for innovation, speaks with Paul McDougall of Scientific American about developing a solar-powered smart phone. “You want something that can be reasonably efficient at a reasonable cost so it doesn’t change the paradigm of what your cell phone costs,” says Bulović.
In an article for Forbes, Nish Acharya examines MIT’s entrepreneurial culture, highlighting how the Institute supports innovators through a variety of programs on campus. Acharya writes that “other universities can learn from MIT how it has empowered its students, faculty and alumni to build their ideas by strategically, and formally, leveraging the institutional capabilities of MIT.”
Bloomberg West broadcasts live from the MIT campus in a special segment highlighting cutting-edge research underway across campus and MIT’s role in driving innovation. “In general, technology can help people,” says Prof. John Leonard. “That’s one of the things I believe as an MIT professor is that technology can make the world a better place.”
During a special live broadcast from the MIT campus, President L. Rafael Reif speaks with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang about MIT’s innovation ecosystem and the future of education. Reif explains that students come to MIT because “they want to use their skills to do something important for the world, to make the world better.”
Fortune reporter Katie Fehrenbacher features MIT startup Grove Labs in a piece about companies aimed at making our day-to-day lives more sustainable. Fehrenbacher explains that Grove's aquaponics-based gardening systems are aimed at providing “eco-minded customers a way to grow their own food.”
CNN’s Jareen Imam writes that MIT researchers have developed a new topical solution that can make wrinkles invisible and could potentially deliver medications to the skin. "We hope this can be used for many different things," explains Prof. Daniel Anderson. "For example, if you need it for a large area of skin you might put it on like sunscreen."