In this interview (in Spanish), graduate students Suhan Kim and Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao speak with Telemundo correspondent Miriam Arias about their work developing insect-sized robots to assist with agricultural needs. “There might be one year where you have a lot of bees in the field that help you pollinate everything. Maybe the next year, it might be affected by the temperature or something [and] you just don’t have enough bees to help you do so,” explains Hsiao.
In an article for The New York Times, Prof. Pranav Rajpurkar of Harvard and Prof. Eric J. Topol of Scripps highlight a recent study by MIT researchers that examined “how radiologists diagnose potential diseases from chest X-rays.” They write that the study’s findings “broadly indicate that right now, simply giving physicians A.I. tools and expecting automatic improvements doesn’t work. Physicians aren’t completely comfortable with A.I. and still doubt its utility, even if it could demonstrably improve patient care.”
Postdoctoral Associate Pat Pataranutaporn speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Heidi Mitchell about his work developing Future You, an online interactive AI platform that “allows users to create a virtual older self—a chatbot that looks like an aged version of the person and is based on an AI text system known as a large language model, then personalized with information that the user puts in.” Pataranutaporn explains: “I want to encourage people to think in the long term, to be less anxious about an unknown future so they can live more authentically today.”
MIT engineers have developed a new training method to help ensure the safe operation of multiagent systems, including robots, search-and-rescue drones and self-driving cars, reports Jijo Malayil for Interesting Engineering. The new approach “doesn’t focus on rigid paths but rather enables agents to continuously map their safety margins—the boundaries within which they must stay,” writes Malayil.
Graduate student Chase Hartquist speaks with Engineeringness reporter Hassan Ahmed his work developing a “universal law governing network fracture energy, providing a unifying framework for understanding material toughness across a wide range of material types.” Hartquist explains: “Our discovery also directly impacts the emerging field of architected materials, whose inherent structures drive their unique performance characteristics.” He adds: “By studying and optimizing performance in this class of materials, we can better understand the extent to which this law can apply generally in cutting-edge material design for many practical applications.”
Graduate students Suhan Kim and Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao speak with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about their work developing insect-sized robots capable of artificial pollination. “Typical drones use electromagnetic motors plus propellers. But, our system is a little different in that we are primarily using an artificial muscle,” explains Kim.
A study by research specialist Samantha Bray analyzes “the career impact on 460 working women aged 50 to 60 who began caregiving for an aging parent or parent-in-law,” reports Michelle Travis for Forbes. “Parental caregiving may act as a shock to women’s financial health at a critical career stage,” says Brady. “Parental caregiving often begins at a time in an individual’s career when they are at their maximum earning potential.”
Prof. Desirée Plata speaks with C&EN reporter Prachi Patel about her work “trying to make our chemical processes and industries compatible with human and ecological health.” Says Plata of what she is most proud of in her work: “As professors, we produce papers and patents, but people are the most important thing we produce. The faculty of the world are training the next generation of researchers. There’s a perception right now that AI is going to solve all of our problems, but it cannot without good physical science information. We need a trained workforce. We need patient chemists who want to solve important problems.”
Writing for Le Monde, Prof. Arnaud Costinot and Prof. Andrés Rodríguez-Clare of UC Berkeley make the case against the U.S. implementing substantial tariffs on imports. “Retaining its dominance in high-tech sectors, regaining a foothold in new green sectors, and restoring prosperity to lagging regions, to name just a few, are critical goals for US economic policy in the years to come. A richer set of economic policies are needed, with tariffs playing at best an auxiliary role,” writes Costinot. “Pursuing a policy of raising tariffs would most likely lead to a new global trade war. Its consequences, unfortunately, are not hard to predict. It would mean less trade and, most importantly, less international cooperation on the big issues of the day: war, poverty, and climate change.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that tariffs “failed to restore jobs to the American heartland,” reports Paul Wiseman for the Associated Press. The study found that “the tariffs ‘neither raised nor lowered U.S. employment’ where they were supposed to protect jobs,” writes Wiseman.
MIT astronomers have analyzed the scintillation – or glistening - produced by a fast radio burst (FRB) to help identify the location of the pulses, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “We discovered that this FRB exhibits ‘twinkling,’ similar to how stars appear to twinkle in the night sky,” explains postdoc Kenzie Nimmo. “Observing this scintillation indicates that the region where the FRB originated must be incredibly small.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new vaccine that “could be potentially used against a broad array of coronaviruses like the one that causes Covid-19 and potentially forestall future pandemics,” reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. “The vaccine involves attaching tiny pieces of virus that remain unchanged across related strains to a nanoparticle,” explains Knapp.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have develop insect-sized robots that could one day be used to help with farming practices like artificial pollination, reports Alice Rizzo for Reuters. "These type of robots will open up a very new type of use case," says graduate student Suhan Kim. "We can start thinking of using our robot, if it works well, for tools like indoor farming."
In a letter to the editor of The Boston Globe, Vice President for Research Ian Waitz addresses the importance of research staff at the Institute, noting that “research universities educate through research.” Waitz emphasizes: “At MIT, there has been double-digit real growth in our on-campus research enterprise over the past 11 years along with growth in our graduate student body. With that come more people, and while these staff may not be directly involved in student classroom instruction, the research they conduct is crucial to the hands-on education that MIT students receive and to the real-world solutions that originate at the school.”
The Financial Times has honored the MIT Climate Pathways Project and the Aggregate Confusion Project (ACP) in their Responsible Business Education awards for research that “delivers tangible societal and scientific contributions.” The MIT Climate Pathways Project was recognized for efforts to blend “expertise across disciplines to use interactive simulations that help business leaders craft smarter climate policies.” The ACP was recognized for addressing inconsistencies in ESG ratings.