Quaise Energy co-founder Carlos Araque BS ’01 MS ’02 speaks with Guy Raz, host of NPR’s How I Built This, about his time on the MIT Electric Vehicle Team, starting his company and the future of geothermal energy. “We would build these cars together, literally from scratch,“ said Araque about the EVT. "Very hands on, a lot of engineering went into that. And it [offered] very early experience with building things that work -- not only work, but work reliantly and consistently.”
Mark Lee MS ’94 spoke with Forbes reporter Karen Walker about the success of Splashtop, a company he co-founded that is developing cloud-based software that allows secure and remote access and support.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), an MIT spinout, has signed an agreement with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to “support the fastest path to clean commercial fusion energy,” reports Ed Browne for Newsweek. “CFS says its agreement with UKAEA could involve exchanges of knowledge and collaboration on things like fuel, modeling, manufacturing and maintenance,” writes Browne.
Butlr, spinout founded by researchers from the MIT Media Lab, is developing sensors that utilize body heat to estimate office occupancy, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. The new technology “uses thermal sensing AI to provide data on space occupancy and historical activity,” writes Wiggers.
Alumni Mahmoud Ghulman and Aziz Alghunaim co-founded Nash, a platform that allows businesses to select specific delivery providers based on price and availability, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “By removing the technical, logistical, and operational overhead associated with offering a reliable delivery experience, Nash helped hundreds of businesses access new customers and revenue streams,” says Ghulman.
Ifueko Igbinedion PhD ’22, Marlyse Reeves PhD ’22 and Wharton alumni Isoken Igbinedion, and Simone Kendle founded Parfait, a company that uses technology to more efficiently design and create wigs, reports Ron Miller for TechCrunch. “The four women have built a solution that lets women simply choose a wig and answer a series of questions to come up with the final design,” explains Miller. “They have mixed this with machine learning to help with sizing and proper tinting, while bringing in human stylists to make the final decisions when needed.”
Professor William Oliver, graduate students Bharath Kannan and Tim Menke, Principal Research Scientist Simon Gustavsson, Shereen Shermak MBA ’97, Youngkyu Sung PhD ’22, and former research scientist Jonas Bylander founded Atlantic Quantum, a company that aims to improve the basic hardware behind quantum computing, reports Ariyana Griffin for Forbes. “The focus on Atlantic Quantum is building hardware that improves the ‘coherence’ of quantum computation, which reduces the errors that are the major speed bump for these machines,” writes Griffin.
CAMP4, a startup founded by Prof. Richard Young, is developing a new class of RNA-based therapies to treat genetic diseases, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. The “startup’s experimental approach will allow it to dial up the output of genes to treat genetic diseases, with an initial focus on a severe form of epilepsy and life-threatening live diseases,” writes Cross.
Fast Company reporter Nate Berg spotlights the work of Liminal, a non-profit research group developed by students from MIT and Harvard that is focused on sustainable development in small towns. “Liminal brought 18 architecture and urbanism students from MIT to Abruzzo for a three-week immersion in the region,” writes Berg, “to learn about local priorities and develop design visions for the future of its small towns.”
Research affiliate Jason Prapas founded Fyto, a company dedicated to developing hardware and software to automate and scale the production of aquatic plants, reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch. Prapas says that “Fyto’s technology taps into a farm’s waste streams as inputs to enable farmers to increase productivity and improve nutrient management while reducing production costs, water usage and greenhouse gas emissions, in some operations by over 50%.”
Ambri, an MIT startup that has developed a liquid-metal battery that can be used for grid-level storage of renewable energy, has announced that it is months away from delivering its first battery to a customer, reports Jacob Wycoff for CBS Boston. "We want to have a battery that can draw from the sun even when the sun doesn't shine," said Prof. Donald Sadoway of the inspiration for Ambri’s battery.
Francis Plaza ’13 co-founded PayMongo, a fintech firm designed to digitalize the Philippine’s cash-based economy, reports Catherine Wang for Forbes. “PayMongo now not only plans to expand beyond the Philippines to other Southeast Asian countries, but also to broaden its remit by becoming a platform for scaling small business in the region,” writes Wang.
Alumnus Andrew Lau co-founded Jellyfish, an engineering management software platform designed to assess contextual business data and engineering signals to promote transparency into how engineering organizations work and operate, reports Bruce Rogers for Forbes. “We know leading a large engineering team is hard, not because necessarily of the coding, it's actually the intersection of technology and the business” says Lau.
VulcanForms, an MIT startup, has developed a 3-D printer that can “generate 100 times the laser energy of most 3-D printers, and can produce parts many times faster,” reports Steve Lohr for The New York Times. “Additive manufacturing lets us rethink how we build things,” explains Martin Feldmann MEng ’14, co-founder, president and CEO of VulcanForms. “That’s where we are now, and that’s a big change.”
Infinite Cooling, an MIT startup, is developing a new system that can capture water from cooling tower plumes and could significantly reduce water consumption in evaporative cooling tower systems, reports Sonal Patel for Power Magazine. “The technology that is developed could lead to significant water savings and improve water quality with minimal energy cost,” explained members of Prof. Kripa Varanasi’s lab.