Found Energy, co-founded by Peter Godart '15, SM '19, PHD '21, has developed a method for transforming aluminum scrap metal into energy, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “The Found Energy system could replace fossil fuel with aluminum-generated hydrogen, a gas that burns at up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but produces no waste carbon,” writes Bray.
Plonts, a plant-based cheese company co-founded by Nathaniel Chu PhD '19, uses microbes to develop “nutritious, inexpensive and sustainable” cheese alternatives, reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch. Chu says “microbes, whether mold, bacteria or yeast, are important to create that flavor. The microbes themselves are tiny sacs of hundreds of different enzymes with many different combinations,” writes Hall.
Writing for Nature, Marinko Sarunic and Cynthia Toth memorialize the life and work of Joseph A. Izatt PhD '91, who “had a special gift, and commitment, to reaching out and working with students and clinicians to create transformative technology." After undergraduate studies at MIT, Izatt focused on applied optics for his graduate work, with his mentors Prof. Michael Feld and Prof. James Fujimoto.
Prof. Richard Binzel speaks with Washington Post reporter Lizette Ortega about Apophis – an asteroid estimated to fly past Earth in April 2029. “Nature is performing this once-per-several-thousand-years experiment for us,” says Binzel. “We have to figure out how to watch.”
Chanyeol Choi MS '19, PhD '21 and Subeen Pang MS '21, PhD '24 cofounded Linq, an AI startup that “helps hedge funds speed up their research into thousands of listed companies worldwide,” reports John Kang for Forbes. The company’s software “automates time-consuming equity research tasks, such as scanning for company announcements and news, building financial models and summarizing earnings reports and call transcripts,” explains Kang.
Amrita Saigal '10 is the founder and CEO of Kudos, a company that has developed a “sustainable diaper that uses some plastic but is 100% lined with cotton and incorporates other degradable materials like sugarcane and trees,” reports Gabrielle Fonrouge for CNBC. “I care so much about being premium, but accessible,” says Saigal. “That is exactly what I want to do, so that we are accessible to as many people, and cleaner materials are not out of reach.”
Prof. Kripa Varanasi and Vishnu Jayaprakash SM '19, PhD '22 founded AgZen, a company aimed at reducing pesticide use by employing a feedback-optimized spraying system, reports Steven Savage for Forbes. Savage notes that for the researchers behind AgZen, “MIT turned out to be a good place to work on the specific imaging technology and on the AI needed to translate that into a practical solution for farmers.”
Research Scientist Mathieu Huot speaks with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about his work with GenSQL, a generative AI system for databases that “could help users make predictions, detect anomalies, guess missing values, fix errors, or generate synthetic data with just a few keystrokes.”
Intelmatix, an AI startup founded by by Almaha Almalki MS '18, Anas Alfaris MS '09, PhD '09 and Ahmad Alabdulkareem PhD '18, aims to provide businesses in the Middle East and North Africa with access to AI for decision-making, reports Annie Njanja for TechCrunch. . “The idea of democratizing access to AI has always been something that we’ve been very passionate about,” says Alfaris.
MIT researchers have developed “a robotic system that can rotate different types of fruit and vegetable using its fingers on one hand, while the other arm is made to peel,” reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist. “These additional steps of doing rotation are something which is very straightforward to humans, we don’t even think about it,” Prof. Pulkit Agrawal. “But for a robot, this becomes challenging.”
Prof. Li-Huei Tsai, director of the Picower Institute, speaks with NPR host Jon Hamilton about her work identifying a protein called reelin that appears to protect brain cells from Alzheimer's. “Tsai says she and her team are now using artificial intelligence to help find a drug that can replicate what reelin does naturally,” says Hamilton.
Researchers at MIT have developed a new method for “training home robots in simulation,” reports Brain Heater for TechCrunch. “Simulation has become a bedrock element of robot training in recent decades,” explains Heater. “It allows robots to try and fail at tasks thousands — or even millions — of times in the same amount of time it would take to do it once in the real world.”
Dean Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, and Pavlos-Petros Sotiriadis PhD '02 sit down with Tassoula Eptakili of Kathimerini to discuss MIT’s unique approach to entrepreneurship, the future of AI and the importance of mentorship. MIT’s approach to education “focuses both on foundational knowledge and its practical application. This prepares [students] to tackle even the most challenging problems,” says Chandrakasan. “It is no coincidence that MIT’s impact on the world has been immense over time: In recent decades, behind almost every significant discovery or new lifesaving technology, you will find our graduates leading or contributing decisively to these efforts.”
Prof. Charles Harvey is among the scientists who “warn that [carbon] removal technologies aren’t sophisticated enough nor coming online fast enough to reduce emissions to the level we need them to,” reports Tristram Korten for Fast Company.
Prof. Richard Binzel talks with Meghan Bartels of Scientific American about the importance of studying Asteroid Apophis – a sizeable space rock that will near Earth within “one tenth of the Earth-moon distance” in 2029. “It’s an incredibly rare event that an asteroid like Apophis would hit the Earth, but it’s better to be knowledgeable than to [be] caught unaware,” says Binzel, a planetary scientist Bartels notes has “spent years raising awareness about the scientific opportunities of the 2029 flyby.”