School of Engineering

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray spotlights Cleana, a startup launched by engineers from MIT and BU that is developing “a new kind of toilet seat that raises or lowers itself to avoid unwelcome splashes, or to prevent objects from falling accidentally into the bowl.” Bray explains that “the company’s engineers created a semi-automatic seat that must first be raised or lowered by the user. This action powers up a pneumatic system with a built-in timer that waits about 30 seconds and then raises or lowers the seat, depending on the application.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a new artificial intelligence system aimed at helping autopilot avoid obstacles while maintaining a desirable flight path, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “Any old algorithm can propose wild changes to direction in order to not crash, but doing so while maintaining stability and not pulping anything inside is harder,” writes Wiggers.

Boston Globe reporter Mike Orcutt spotlights Prof. Silvio Micali and Prof. Shafi Goldwasser for their work developing the theory behind zero-knowledge proofs and their contributions to the field of modern cryptography.

Sean Liu ‘10, MNG ’10 showcased his baking skills as a contestant on “The Great American Baking Show,” reports Jana Rossi for Village Life. “Liu described his recipes as having an Asian influence, an ‘East meets West with a little twist,’ and said he walked away a much more confident baker and thinks about recipes differently,” writes Rossi.

Sublime Systems, an MIT startup, is on a mission to manufacture emissions-free cement, writes David Abel for The Boston Globe. “If we’re successful, this could be a way of making cement for millennia to come,” said Leah Ellis, chief executive of Sublime Systems. “What we’ve found is that we can bring tools from our technical training to these problems, and use them in new and creative ways,” said Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang, co-founder of Sublime Systems. “I believe it’s a very fertile time for this kind of reinvention.”

Alumni Billy Thalheimer and Michael Klinker co-founded Regent, a company that has developed and manufactured an all-electric sea glider, reports WCVB. “A sea glider is a class of vehicle known as a wing in ground (WIG),” says Thalheimer. “So, it flies within a wingspan of the surface at all times, dock to doc, exclusively over water.”

Darby Dunn ’08 speaks with CNBC reporter Catherine Clifford about her journey from building rockets for SpaceX to working on making fusion energy a reality at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). “For me, it really came down to wanting to use my energy to clean up the planet instead of get off it,” says Dunn. “So that was the huge shift for me to come to CFS.” 

MIT scientists have found that the “motions of undulating animals and the states of quantum objects can be described using strikingly similar equations,” writes Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. The similarity “allowed the team to use mathematical tools previously developed by quantum physicists to analyze the animals,” notes Padavic-Callaghan. “For instance, the team quantified how differently a snake-like robot and a C. elegans move and created a diagram that placed them on a spectrum of other undulating creatures.”

NBC Boston’s Jeff Saperstone visits MIT to learn more about how researchers discovered that a common hydrogel used in cosmetic creams, industrial coatings and pharmaceutical capsules can absorb moisture from the atmosphere as the temperature rises. The material could one day be used to harvest moisture for drinking water or feeding crops. “For a planet that's getting hotter, this could be a game-changing discovery,” Saperstone notes.

New York Times reporter Natasha Singer spotlights the Day of AI, an MIT RAISE program aimed at teaching K-12 students about AI. “Because AI is such a powerful new technology, in order for it to work well in society, it really needs some rules,” said MIT President Sally Kornbluth. Prof. Cynthia Breazeal, MIT’s dean of digital learning, added: “We want students to be informed, responsible users and informed, responsible designers of these technologies.”

Meghan Maupin MS ’18 has been named CEO of OurX, a Black hair care company that “taps into six years of research and data mining to create hair regimens and education for the scalp and tightly textured hair,” reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch.

Founded by MIT engineers, CubicPV is building a solar-component factory, reports Phred Dvorak for The Wall Street Journal. CubicPV’s process “peels a thin layer of crystallized silicon off the top of the molten material, a technique the company says is faster, cheaper and less wasteful,” explains Dvorak.

Researchers at MIT have developed an ingestible pill that can raise levels of hormones to help increase appetite and decrease nausea, reports Maggie Chen for Wired. The researchers “hope that it can one day act as an effective noninvasive therapy for those who experience gastroparesis—or other eating disorders—essentially being a temporary switch that can be activated to drive hunger and digestion,” writes Chen.

Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Aleksander Mądry join GBH’s Greater Boston to explore how AI can be regulated and safely integrated into our lives. “With much of our society driven by informational spaces — in particular social media and online media in general — AI and, in particular, generative AI accelerates a lot of problems like misinformation, spam, spear phishing and blackmail,” Mądry explains. Acemoglu adds that he feels AI reforms should be approached “more broadly so that AI researchers actually work in using these technologies in human-friendly ways, trying to make humans more empowered and more productive.”

VulcanForms, an MIT startup, is at the “leading edge of a push to transform 3-D printing from a niche technology — best known for new-product prototyping and art-class experimentation — into an industrial force,” writes David Scharfenberg for The Boston Globe. Scharfenberg notes that VulcanForms “could help usher in something new — a high-tech industrialism aimed straight at the country’s most pressing problems.”