Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E)

Researchers from MIT and BU have developed the Cleana toilet seat, a set of non-electric automatic lifting and lowering toilet seats that aim to make bathrooms more sanitary, reports Rob Way for WHDH.   

Vaikkunth Mugunthan MS ’19 PhD ‘22 and Christian Lau MS ’20, PhD ’22 co-founded DynamoFL – a software company that “offers software to bring large language models (LLMs) to enterprise and fine-tune those models on sensitive data,” reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “Generative AI has brought to the fore new risks, including the ability for LLMs to ‘memorize’ sensitive training data and leak this data to malicious actors,” says Mugunthan. “Enterprises have been ill-equipped to address these risks, as properly addressing these LLM vulnerabilities would require recruiting teams of highly specialized privacy machine learning researchers to create a streamlined infrastructure for continuously testing their LLMs against emerging data security vulnerabilities.”

Sean Hunt MS ’13 PhD ’16 co-founded Solugen, a startup working to develop industrial chemicals with environmentally friendly ingredients, reports David H. Freedman for Newsweek. “The company's goals over the next seven years are to reduce the carbon emissions released by industry into the environment by an amount equivalent to eliminating 2 million cars, and to make enough bioplastic to get rid of 5 billion non-degradable plastic bottles,” writes Freedman.

Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman speaks with alumnus Jeremy Wertheimer, co-founder of ITA Software, about the state of AI innovation in the Greater Boston area, reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “Back in the day, we called it good old-fashioned AI,” says Wertheimer. “But the future is to forget all that clever coding. You want to have an incredibly simple program with enough data and enough computing power.”

A number of MIT alumni including Elaheh Ahmadi, Alexander Amini, and Jose Amich have been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Local Boston list.

Jeff Heglie ’85 co-founded For Bitter For Worse, a zero-proof spirits company focused on bringing non-alcoholic cocktails to market, reports Ann Trieger Kurland for The Boston Globe. “They have won medals for their drinks, which are crafted like spirits,” writes Kurland. “Herbs and botanicals are first macerated in alcohol to extract their flavors, then they use a still to remove the alcohol in a process Heglie, an MIT graduate, calls ‘reverse bootlegging.’ Natural ingredients — organic roots and juices, fruit peels, spices, and more — are blended into the robust base to add layers of flavor.”

Merritt Jenkins MBA '21 co-founded Kodama Systems, a startup developing a semiautonomous timber harvesting machine to remove tree and debris from forests and bury them in an effort to help combat global warming, reports Christopher Helman for Forbes. “Scientists say burying trees can reduce global warming as well—particularly if those trees would otherwise end up burning or decaying, spewing their stored carbon into the air,” writes Helman.

MIT has been ranked among the top universities with the most successful start-up founders according to a new survey, reports Patrick Jack for Times Higher Education.

Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, emphasizes the central role universities play in fostering innovation and the importance of ensuring universities have the computing resources necessary to help tackle major global challenges. Rus writes, “academia needs a large-scale research cloud that allows researchers to efficiently share resources” to address hot-button issues like generative AI. “It would provide an integrated platform for large-scale data management, encourage collaborative studies across research organizations, and offer access to cutting-edge technologies, while ensuring cost efficiency,” Rus explains.

Institute Prof. Bob Langer speaks with Curiosity podcast hosts Immad Akhynd and Raj Suri about his work in the field of biotechnology, delving into how he has co-founded 40 companies. “I wanted to get out and do some good in the world,” says Langer. “That's where patents come in and that's where companies come in. And I think the challenge of the company is very different because you have what I call a platform technology.”

Forbes reporter Stuart Anderson spotlights a number of international students who became founders of top U.S. AI companies, including MIT alumni Sébastien Boyer MS '16 and Aditya Khosla PhD '16. Boyer co-founded “FarmWise, which employs AI for precision weeding on farms,” and Khosla co-founded PathAI, a biotech startup that uses AI to “optimize the analysis of patient tissue samples and for other clinical and diagnostic purposes,” writes Anderson.

In an article for U.S. News & World Report spotlighting U.S. universities that offer students access to the latest cutting-edge technologies, Cole Claybourn spotlights MIT’s maker culture. “‘Maker culture’ permeates the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students work in collaborative settings to innovate and create,” Claybourn writes. 

Lynette Seow MBA ’23 co-founded Safe Space Singapore, a B2B2C platform aimed at strengthening “mental resilience by providing tele-therapy care and prevention education,” reports Matt Symonds for Forbes. “Ultimately, I figured that if I wanted to build a Safe Space for people to come to, I had to be one to the people I met,” shares Seow. “If improving mental health is my mission, and a disproportionate percentage of LGBTQ+ people experience mental health struggles, how could I ignore drawing attention to this cause even if it meant being a bit more public about my personal life?"

Researchers from MIT and BU developed the Cleana toilet seat, which is aimed at addressing poor toilet etiquette, reports Katie Thompson for WCVB. “One toilet seat lifts and stays in the up position after the seat is placed down is designed for a more high-traffic commercial space,” writes Thompson. “The residential version, meanwhile, includes a seat and lid that are both designed to automatically lower after use, helping protect the open toilet bowl from small children and pets — as well as creating a better aesthetic look.”

Ali Khademhosseini PhD ’05 founded Omeat, a cultivated meat startup that “enables the cultivation of any meat in a way that is orders-of-magnitude more sustainable and humane than the conventional approach,” reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch.