The Press Trust of India spotlights how Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer, has been named the Institute’s new provost. In announcing Chandrakasan’s new role, President Sally Kornbluth noted that he “brings to this post an exceptional record of shaping and leading important innovations for the Institute.”
Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer and dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, has been named the Institute’s new provost, reports The Hindu. “As MIT’s chief academic officer, Prof. Chandrakasan will focus on three overarching priorities: understanding institutional needs and strategic financial planning, attracting and retaining top talent, and supporting cross-cutting research, education, and entrepreneurship programming.”
A study by Prof. Noelle Selin has found that climate change will impact our ability to curb smoke and smog pollutants, reports Vivian La for WBUR. The researchers “used computer models to predict how air pollution will develop in the Eastern United States over the next few decades,” explains La. Selin underscored the importance of policies that reduce air pollution noting that: “what we’re doing to the atmosphere has impacts and it’s important not to roll these back.”
Prof. Tali Sharot speaks with Darian Woods of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money about why members of Gen Z may be feeling financial dysmorphia. “In order to be happy and satisfied, we need to see ourself progressing,” says Sharot. “That is true on every level, whether it is intellectually or whether it's financially.”
Gizmodo reporter Isaac Schultz writes that MIT astronomers have uncovered the most distant galaxy ever detected, dubbed MoM-z14, using the James Webb Space Telescope. Schultz notes that MoM-z14 “isn’t just some dim smudge, either—it’s unexpectedly luminous, echoing a growing theme in JWST’s discoveries. MoM-z14 now joins a strange new class of young galaxies that shine far more brightly than anyone expected.”
MIT astronomers have found evidence that a massive asteroid impact billions of years ago “may have briefly amplified the moon's old, weak magnetic field, leaving behind a magnetic imprint still detectable in lunar rocks,” reports Sharmila Kuthunur for Space.com. “While the moon once had a weak magnetic field generated by a small molten core, the team's research suggests it likely wouldn't have been strong enough on its own to magnetize surface rocks,” Kuthunur explains. “However, a massive asteroid impact may have changed that — at least briefly.”
Ars Technica reporter Jennifer Oulette writes that MIT researchers have found that a “large asteroid impact briefly boosted the Moon's early weak magnetic field—and that this spike is what is recorded in some lunar samples.”
Postdoc Rohan Naidu and his colleagues have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to examine galaxy MoM-z14, first spotted in 2023, reports Jonathan O’Callaghan for New Scientist. “Naidu and his colleagues confirmed MoM-z14 is the most distant galaxy yet,” writes Naidu. “The light we see now was emitted just 280 million years after the big bang, breaking the previous record by about 10 million years.”
Prof. Sebastian Lourido speaks with Salon reporter Elizabeth Hlavinka about the risks associated with parasite cleanses. “When you cause significant changes in the intestine, you are at times obliterating many of the beneficial organisms that are helping us digest food, but in some cases, producing vitamins that are actually occupying that niche and preventing bad organisms from taking over,” says Lourido.
Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with WBUR reporters Vivian La and Barbara Moran about the impact of NOAA cuts on the future of weather forecasting. “They're cutting into bone and muscle when they should be cutting into fat,” says Emanuel. He adds that streamlining operations and saving money “requires deep understanding of the organization and deep consultation with people who understand it.”
A study by Prof. Rebecca Saxe and her colleagues has found that the medial prefrontal cortex in infants is active when exposed to faces, reports Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon. “Maybe it’s not that [at] first babies do visual processing and only later are connected to social meaning,” says Saxe. “Maybe these brain regions are active because babies are responding to the social meaning of people and faces as early on as we can measure their brains.”
Prof. John Urschel speaks with Guardian reporter Rich Tenorio about his decision to call an audible and leave his career as a guard for the Baltimore Ravens to focus on his love for math as a student and then a professor at MIT. “I realized I was missing the academic environment,” he says. “I missed talking math with people, learning things, being around other people who like … math-related issues."
Researchers at MIT have successfully captured the first images of individual atoms interacting freely in space, reports Georgina Jedikovska for Interesting Engineering. “The images, which show interactions between free-range particles that had only been theorized until now, will reportedly allow the scientists to directly observe quantum phenomena in real space,” writes Jedikovska.
Writing for Physics Today, Prof. David Kaiser chronicles his academic and professional career studying physics and the history of science. “Efforts to understand quantum entanglement and to test or constrain various alternatives have enabled generations of physicists to explore the fundamental strangeness of quantum theory,” writes Kaiser. "At the same time, as topics like entanglement and Bell’s inequality have wandered into and out of the mainstream, they enable us to chart the changing boundaries in the field of physics and the shifting place that physicists have occupied in our wider cultures.”
Prof. Sherry Turkle speaks with New York Times reporter Sopan Deb about how humans interact with artificial intelligence, specifically chatbots such as ChatGPT. “If an object is alive enough for us to start having intimate conversations, friendly conversations, treating it as a really important person in our lives, even though it’s not, it’s alive enough for us to show courtesy to,” says Turkle.