Researchers from Atlantic Quantum, an MIT startup building quantum computers, have published new research showing “the architecture of the circuits underlying its quantum computer produces far fewer errors than the industry standard,” reports Rashi Shrivastava for Forbes.
MIT researchers are leading three missions over the next decade to characterize Venus’ atmosphere for habitability, reports Bruce Dorminey for Forbes. “Understanding Venus is key to understanding exo-earths,” writes Dorminey.
New York Times reporter Siobhan Roberts spotlights Yulia’s Dream, a free math enrichment and research program for exceptional high school students in Ukraine organized through the MIT Department of Mathematics. “Mathematics is often misunderstood as a solitary endeavor,” says Lecturer Slava Gerovitch. “One cannot be a successful mathematician without being integrated into these international networks for the exchange of knowledge.”
Prof. Max Tegmark has been named to TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in AI. “Our best course of action is to follow biotech’s example, and ensure that potentially dangerous products need to be approved by AI-experts at an AI [version of the] FDA before they can be launched,” says Tegmark of how government should regulate the development of AI. “More than 60% of Americans support such an approach.”
In the 2024 Wall Street Journal/College Pulse ranking, MIT has been honored as one of the best colleges in the United States, reports Emily Sweeney for The Boston Globe. This year’s ranking put a new emphasis “on student outcomes, such as graduation rates and graduate salaries,” explains Sweeney.
MIT has been named one of the top colleges in America in the 2024 Wall Street Journal/College Pulse ranking, report Kevin McAllister and Tom Corrigan for The Wall Street Journal. “The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse ranking emphasizes how much a college improves its students’ chances of graduating on time, and how much it boosts the salaries they earn after graduation,” explain McAllister and Corrigan.
MIT has been named one of America’s Top Colleges in Forbes’ annual roundup, reports Emma Whitford and Janet Novack for Forbes. The annual list “showcases 500 of the finest U.S. colleges, ranked using data on student success, return on investment and alumni influence,” explain Whitford and Novack.
Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with The Hill reporter Zack Budryk about how Hurricane Idalia will impact rural Florida. “The thing that makes [Idalia] a little bit unusual is that it hit a part of the Florida coastline which has experienced very few hurricane-level landfalls in the last hundred years,” says Emanuel.
Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with Jeff Martin at the Associated Press about the potential influence of the supermoon on Hurricane Idalia. “When the moon is full, the sun and the moon are pulling in the same direction, which has the effect of increasing tides above normal ranges” says Emanuel.
Adjunct Prof. Tali Sharot speaks with NPR Life Kit host Marielle Segarra about how lying impacts the brain. Sharot refers to an experiment she conducted that used brain imaging technology to monitor how the brain reacts to lying and found that as adults “grew more comfortable lying, the emotional response decreased – meaning that the players became more and more desensitized to their dishonesty with each subsequent lie.”
Graduate students Martin Nisser and Marisa Gaetz co-founded Brave Behind Bars, a program designed to provide incarcerated individuals with coding and digital literacy skills to better prepare them for life after prison, reports Morgan Radford for MSNBC. Computers and coding skills “are really kind of paramount for fostering success in the modern workplace,” says Nisser.
MIT scientists have developed a new brain “atlas” and computer model that sheds insight into the brain-body connections in C. elegans worms, reports Lauren Leffer for Scientific American. “Through establishing those brain-behavior links in a humble roundworm,” writes Leffer, “neuroscientists are one step closer to understanding how all sorts of animal brains, even potentially human ones, encode action.”
Researchers from MIT and Harvard have explored astrocytes, a group of brain cells, from a computational perspective and developed a mathematical model that shows how they can be used to build a biological transformer, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “The brain is far superior to even the best artificial neural networks that we have developed, but we don’t really know exactly how the brain works,” says research staff member Dmitry Krotov. “There is scientific value in thinking about connections between biological hardware and large-scale artificial intelligence networks. This is neuroscience for AI and AI for neuroscience.
Prof. Mark Tegmark speaks with The Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Bobrow about the importance of companies and governments working together to mitigate the risks of new AI technologies. Tegmark “recommends the creation of something like a Food and Drug Administration for AI, which would force companies to prove their products are safe before releasing them to the public,” writes Bobrow.
A number of MIT alumni including Elaheh Ahmadi, Alexander Amini, and Jose Amich have been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Local Boston list.