Prof. Albert Saiz speaks with Salon reporter Cara Michelle Smith about the barriers to homeownership. “If you sort Americans by wealth, and forget about the top 10% or 20%, most of our wealth is indeed in housing,” says Saiz. He adds: “Obviously, getting that first home is the hardest of the steps. Because once you have a house, you can build collateral, and that equity is going to be helpful for you to buy a second home.”
USA Today reporter Eric Lagatta spotlights how MIT engineers and scientists are sending three payloads into space, on a course set for the Moon’s south polar region. The payload includes a mini, thumb-sized rover dubbed “AstroAnt” that the MIT researchers designed to help monitor the larger space vehicle. “AstroAnt is designed to inspect external surfaces of spacecraft, and will also collect thermal data and measurements while the rover explores,” writes Lagatta.
Research Assistants Maisy Lam and Laura Dodds speak with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about their work developing MiFly, a new approach that “enables a drone to self-localize, or determine its position, in indoor, dark, and low-visibility environments.” Dodds explains: “Our high-level idea was we can place a millimeter wave sensor on the drone, and it can localize itself with respect to a sticker that we place on the wall, a millimeter wave tag. This would allow us to provide a localization system in these challenging environments with minimal infrastructure.”
Diane Hoskins '79, a member of the MIT Corporation, has been named a CNBC Changemaker for her impact on the business world, reports Ian Thomas for CNBC. “Over her more than three-decade career at Gensler, she has risen up the firm’s ranks to now serve as its global co-chair alongside Andy Cohen, who Hoskins shares long-term strategy and day-to-day operations with and previously served as co-CEO with for nearly two decades,” writes Thomas. “Hoskins has also been at the center of the discussion around how workspace design intersects with employee performance and engagement, overseeing Gensler’s Workplace Survey and influencing how the industry at large designs offices and other spaces.”
Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, speaks with Dezeen reporter Lizzie Crook about how this year’s event will be a “science-heavy edition of the festival examining the changing role of architecture at a time of environmental instability.” Says Ratti: "Architecture starts when the environment is against us and we adapt it to somewhere where we can live. We can look at this through science. There's going to be a lot of science in this year's biennale.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Karilyn Crockett explores the history of the Home for Aged Colored Women and its residents, noting that “uncovering the stories of these women, many of whom worked for decades as domestic servants for wealthy Boston families, has been a revelation." Crockett explains that: “using US Census records, Ancestry.com, and materials from the Massachusetts Historical Society and National Park Service, students painstakingly sifted through newspapers, birth certificates, and cursive-laden archival records to bring these women to life.”
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.”
In a discussion with Metropolis reporter Francisco Brown, Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, discusses his vision for this year’s festival. “I think the biggest challenge of architecture today, which we are trying to address both with our practice at CRA (Carlo Ratti Associati) and our research at MIT, is to create a better alliance between natural and artificial systems,” Ratti explains.
Prof. Albert Saiz reflects on a recent study from LendingTree which has found that “single women own more homes than single men in the United States,” reports Claudie Bellanger for Boston.com. Saiz, suggests “that education is a factor, especially in Massachusetts,” writes Bellanger. “The demand for labor in Massachusetts is biased toward highly skilled laborers who have a bachelor’s degree or higher,” says Saiz.
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.”
MIT Profs. Angela Belcher, Emery Brown, Paula Hammond and Feng Zhang have been honored with National Medals of Science and Technology, reports Michael T. Neitzel for Forbes. Additionally, R. Lawrence Edwards '76 received a National Medal of Science and Noubar Afeyan PhD '87, a member of the MIT Corporation, accepted a National Medal on behalf of Moderna. The recipients have been awarded “the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievements and leadership in science and technology,” explains Neitzel.
A new study co-authored by Prof. Emeritus Frank Levy that finds chatbot-style artificial intelligence could “fuel a reshaping of the population and labor market map of America,” writes Steve Lohr for The New York Times. Levy and his colleagues found that midsize cities in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and South are “well positioned to use AI to become more productive, helping to draw more people to those areas.”
Knowable Magazine reporter Katherine Ellison spotlights Future You, a new program developed by researchers at MIT that “offers young people a chance to chat with an online, AI-generated simulation of themselves at age 60.”
New Yorker reporter Rivka Galchen visits the lab of Prof. Hugh Herr to learn more about his work aimed at the “merging of body and machine.” Herr and his team are developing bionic prosthetics that can be completely controlled by the human brain and are designed to allow users “to walk approximately as quickly and unthinkingly as anyone else.” Herr imagines a future where “we will be able to sculpt our own brains and bodies, and therefore our own identities and experiences.”
Forbes reporter Tom Teicholz spotlights the artistic work of alumna Lauren Bon. “Over the last two decades, as part of her art practice, Bon has undertaken projects that involve an exploration of urban natural resources in ways that have a positive environmental and societal impact,” writes Teicholz.