Alex Padilla ’94 has been appointed to fill the Senate seat held by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, reports Shawn Hubler for The New York Times. Padilla, who will be the first Latino senator from California, said of his appointment: “I love public service and I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years, and I’d like to continue as long as I’m effective and they’ll continue to have me.”
Axios reporter Bryan Walsh spotlights a new study by researchers from MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future that examines the impact of AI on the future of work. Walsh notes that the report’s authors “recommend programs that can enhance computer skills from kindergarten through the university level, while urging businesses and worker organizations to build cushions for the sometimes harsh changes AI will wreak on work.”
Writing for the Financial Times, Ryosuke Harada highlights a new MIT report that emphasizes the “importance of education and investment in human resources and warns that in the absence of a strategy, jobs will be lost and divisions in society will widen.”
Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with Wall Street Journal reporters Sarah Krouse, Jared S. Hopkins and Ana Wilde Mathews about the challenges posed by distributing the Covid-19 vaccine across the country. “Everything has to come together—the packaging, the dry ice, the vials, the material itself. It all has to come together to the same place and have enough of it and exactly the right people there ready to take it,” says Sheffi. “Right now, there’s no conductor to the symphony,” just many parts that each need to work.
Writing for Wired, Will Knight spotlights how MIT researchers developed a new technique to squeeze an AI vision algorithm onto a low-power computer chip that can run for months on a battery. The advance “could help bring more advanced AI capabilities, like image and voice recognition, to home appliances and wearable devices, along with medical gadgets and industrial sensors.”
CBS News reporter Sophie Lewis spotlights NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli '05 and Kate Rubins, a former researcher at MIT’s Whitehead Institute, noting that they are training for the upcoming Artemis missions, which will "send the first woman to walk on the moon."
Prof. Giovanni Traverso has been highlighted by Wired as one of 32 innovators who are changing the world, writes Sanjana Varghese for Wired. Prof. Robert Langer notes that Traverso is “transforming how we interact with medications, for example through the development of pills that remain in the body for multiple weeks or months to address medication non-adherence, or the creation of small, swallowable devices enabling the delivery of biologics like insulin.”
MIT researchers have developed a model that could help people estimate the risks of contracting Covid-19 in different scenarios, reports Emily Czachor for Newsweek. The tool “provides calculations which estimate how many people can remain within an enclosed space, and for how long, before they are theoretically exposed to the virus.”
Prof. James Fujimoto and research affiliate Eric Swanson have been named recipients of the Sanford and Sue Greenberg Prize to End Blindness, reports Sandrine Ceurstemont for National Geographic. “The winners were chosen based on the strength of their contributions to eliminate blindness, the ambitious aim set out by the prize organizers in 2012,” Ceurstemont explains.
Research scientist Brian Subirana speaks with The Economist’s Babbage podcast about his work developing a new AI system that could be used to help diagnose people asymptomatic Covid-19.
MIT researchers have developed a new model that could be used to help determine “how long you will be safe in a room with someone who is positive for COVID-19 based on room type, size and even the ventilation and filtration system,” reports Boston 25 News.
Fast Company reporter Mark Sullivan writes that Prof. John Bush and Prof. Martin Z. Bazant have developed a mathematical model that “simulates the fluid dynamics of virus-loaded respiratory droplets in any space, from a cozy kitchen to a gigantic concert hall.”
MIT researchers have developed a new system that uses solar power to sterilize medical tools, according to The Economist. The system “should cost just a tenth as much to make commercially as a conventional autoclave of equivalent potency.”
Axios reporter Bryan Walsh writes that during the virtual AI and the Work of the Future Congress, Elisabeth Reynolds, executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, noted that “education and training are central to helping the current and next generation thrive in the labor market.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that “changes in coronavirus levels in wastewater preceded rises and falls in positive test results by four to 10 days,” reports Kim Tingley for The New York Times. The findings suggest that “sewage surveillance could play an important role in helping contain the pandemic.”