MIT engineers have developed a new system that helps pesticides adhere more effectively to plant leaves, allowing farmers to use fewer chemicals without sacrificing crop protection, reports Michigan Farm News. The new technology “adds a thin coating around droplets as they are being sprayed onto a field, increasing the stickiness of pesticides by as much as a hundredfold.”
Using his background in physics, Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 redesigned the modern baseball bat to “improve the frequency and quality of contact, based on where the batters most frequently hit the ball,” reports Alex Speier for The Boston Globe.
USA Today reporter Steve Gardner spotlights the “torpedo bat” – a baseball bat developed by Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03. The new design moves “more of the wood toward the sweet spot of the bat, where players try to make contact and where the bat will produce optimal results,” explains Gardner.
Prof. David Pritchard speaks with NBC News reporter David K. Li about his former student Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 and his work developing the “torpedo” baseball bat. “It just takes some outsiders, like Aaron, who has a Ph.D. from MIT and really understands physics and knows what's going on, to be the sort of guy who drives something under the radar and see if it works," says Pritchard.
Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 has designed a new baseball bat, dubbed the torpedo bat, in which wood is moved “lower down the barrel after the label, and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin,” reports the Associated Press. “At the end of the day it’s about the batter not the bat,” says Leanhardt. “It’s about the hitter and their hitting coaches. I’m happy to always help those guys get a little bit better but ultimately it’s up to them to put good swings and grind it out every day. So, credit to those guys.”
Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 has developed a new baseball bat that has “moved the fattest part from the end to the area where most contact is made,” reports Steve Henson for The Los Angeles Times.
Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 speaks with The Athletic reporter Brendan Kuty about his work developing a new “torpedo-like” baseball bat. The bats “are custom-made to player preferences and are designed so that the densest part of the bat is where that particular hitter most often makes contact with the baseball,” writes Kuty. Says Leanhardt of the bat’s design: “It’s just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you’re trying to do damage on the baseball.”
Prof. David Sontag, Monica Agrawal PhD '23, Luke Murray SM '22, and Divya Gopinath '19, MEng '20 co-founded Layer Health - an AI healthcare startup that is applying large language models (LLMs) to help clinicians with medical chart reviews and data abstraction, reports Seth Joseph for Forbes. “The same chart review problem we’re solving with our clinical registry module is faced by clinicians at the point of care,” says Sontag. “For example, one of our next modules will focus on real-time clinical decision support to help automate clinical care pathways, leading to more reliable, high-quality care."
Biogen will move its headquarters to a new facility at 75 Broadway in MIT’s Kendall Common development, reports Greg Ryan and Hannah Green for the Boston Business Journal. “The lease is one of the most significant life sciences real estate transactions in Greater Boston,” they write.
Biogen will move its headquarters to MIT’s Kendall Common development in 2028, reports Catherine Carlock and Jonathan Saltzman for The Boston Globe. “Biogen has been a foundational presence in the Massachusetts life science ecosystem for close to half a century,” says Governor Maura Healey. “We are thrilled to see them begin a new era in our state.”
24M, an MIT startup, has been named to Fast Company’s list of the most innovative companies in the energy space for 2025, reports Alex Pasternack. The company “has been developing a portfolio of battery technologies designed to make batteries that are safer, cheaper, cleaner, and longer-lasting,” explains Pasternack. “Its technologies include a semisolid electrode for conventional and novel battery chemistries, which gives the battery more energy density and requires fewer materials, and a unique separator that monitors the cell and helps prevent the aberrations that cause shorts and fires.”
Venti Technologies – a company co-founded by MIT researchers and alumni – has been named one of the most innovative companies in the Asia-Pacific region for Fast Company’s 2025 roundup of top companies, reports Katerina Barton. The company focuses “on autonomous technologies for industrial use—specifically in low-speed environments like ports, airports, and warehouses,” explains Barton. “The company’s suite of special-purpose algorithms is designed to optimize cargo container transportation and works with a wide range of vehicles, allowing the AI-enabled technology to move varying weight loads and distances through complex spaces and changing routes.”
Newsha Ghaeli PhD '17, co-founder of BioBot Analytics, speaks with GBH Morning Edition host Mark Herz about the company’s role in helping public health officials during the Covid-19 pandemic. “When we started the company, the vision was really that wastewater is a source of very important source on human health,” says Ghaeli.
New Yorker reporter Brent Crane spotlights Quaise Energy, an MIT geothermal energy startup founded by Carlos Araque BS '01, MS '02. Crane explains that central to Quaise’s system is the gyrotron, a tubular device that “works like a very, very powerful microwave, emitting ‘millimeter waves’ that would vaporize your vegetables; they can generate temperatures of a hundred million degrees Celsius.” Crane notes that: “About a decade ago, Paul Woskov, an MIT research engineer, showed that the technology could be used for ‘energy drilling’ without a physical bit. Quaise’s scientists propose that the heat of a gyrotron could stabilize tunnel walls by vitrifying them into glass.”
Bloomberg reporter Robb Mandelbaum spotlights how the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship has developed a new AI JetPack to help students accelerate the entrepreneurial process. “Our mission at the Trust Center is to advance the field of innovation-driven entrepreneurship everywhere,” Paul Cheek, executive director of the Martin Trust Center. “We can’t do it with intuition or by throwing stuff against the wall. We have to practice entrepreneurship in a rigorous, systematic way that increases the odds of success.”