Startups

Bloomberg reporter Janet Wu speaks with Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine. Rae explains that The Engine backs “those types of founders that are on a mission to do something that will be truly impactful in a positive way to the planet."

Boston Globe Magazine reporter Courtney Humphries spotlights MIT startup Biobot Analytics, co-founded by Mariana Matus ’18 and Newsha Ghaeli ’17, for using their wastewater and sewage tracking technology to identify Covid -19 in communities across the United States. “Because people shed the virus in their stool before they test positive, Biobot’s data are often a leading indicator of where the infection is heading, arriving ahead of case counts by a few days,” writes Humphries.

MIT researchers have found a way to use wastewater testing surveillance as a public health tool to identify infectious diseases, reports Marie Szaniszlo for the Boston Herald. “Wastewater testing first started with a discovery by MIT researchers is being used nationwide as an early warning sign,” writes Szaniszlo.

New York Times reporter Amanda Morris speaks with Eric Baker, an avid outdoorsperson with chronic debilitating joint diseases, about the GRIT Freedom chair, an all-terrain wheelchair invented by MIT researchers. “With the new chair, Mr. Baker hops curbs, hunts, visits the beach, and can cross mud, rocks and gravel,” writes Morris. 

Assaf Biderman ‘05, associate director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, discusses his startup Superpedestrian, a transportation robotics company that has developed electric scooters available in over 60 cities across the world.  “I think we hit the holy grail of micromobility, which is detecting when you’re on the sidewalk every time and stopping or slowing the vehicle,” said Biderman.

Forbes reporter Abdo Riani spotlights an MIT and Northwestern study that uncovered why startup founders should be more cautious when listening to customer feedback. In a “study of six years’ worth of transactional data of 130 thousand customers in large retail chains…[researchers] made an interesting discovery – about 25% of customers consistently buy products that end up failing within 3 years,” writes Riani.

Boston Globe reporter Pranshu Verma spotlights MIT startup Biobot Analytics, co-founded by Mariana Matus ’18 and Newsha Ghaeli ’17, for their work studying sewage data to better predict the spread of Covid-19 in communities. “For health officials, it [the data] confirms whether Covid spikes in the community are real, and not due to increased testing or other factors,” writes Verma. “Moreover, Covid levels in waste water are a leading indicator for new clinical cases, giving health officials a few days’ notice if they’ll see more sick patients showing symptoms.”

Ubiquitous Energy, an MIT startup, is developing technology to transform windows into surfaces that capture solar energy, reports Catherine Clifford for CNBC. “Ubiquitous makes a coating for windows that uses semiconducting materials to convert sunlight into electricity,” writes Clifford. “The coating is just nanometers thick and tiny wires connect the solar window to electrical systems where the energy is used.”

MIT startup Ubiquitous Energy has created transparent solar panels that can also generate electricity, reports Adele Peters for Fast Company. “The windows, with two panes of glass that are sealed together, have wires that can be connected either directly to something next to the window – such as a light or electronic blinds – or connected to a battery in the building or back into the electric grid,” writes Peters.

Fast Company reporter Mark Sullivan spotlights QuEra Computing as one of the 15 startups to watch in 2022. “Research breakthroughs by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University led to the launch of QuEra Computing, which uses a unique quantum architecture and laser techniques to arrange and direct the tiny qubits or quantum bits, in its 256-qubit system,” writes Sullivan.

MIT startup Formlabs has announced a new pair of 3D printers featuring an exposure and printing speed increase that is up to 40% faster than previous models, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The Form 3+ is the next iteration designed to help users go from idea to part in hand as quickly and easily as possible,” says CEO Max Lobovsky MS ’11.

Jin Stedge ’13 cofounded TrueNorth, a trucking company aimed at putting truckers in charge of their own companies, reports Igor Bosilkovski for Forbes. “We give truckers a single place to manage their whole business, and that’s everything from finding and booking loads, sending updates to customers, tracking applications, all in one place and charging one clean fee instead of ten different fees,” says Stedge.

Renaldo Webb ’10 founded PetPlate, a fresh-cooked pet food company that delivers personalized meal plans directly to pet owners, reports Igor Bosilkcovski for Forbes. “Webb got the idea for the company when he worked with pet food companies as a consultant, and was able to realize that the low quality ingredients in the pet food had been the underlying reason for many health issues with pets, particularly obesity,” writes Bosilkcovski.

MIT scientists have concluded that nuclear fusion can be used to power electricity grids within the next decade, reports David Abel for The Boston Globe. “It may sound like science fiction, but the science of fusion is real, and the recent scientific advancements are game-changing,” says Dennis Whyte, director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

Prof. Timothy Lu, Prof. Jim Collins and Philip Lee ’03 co-founded Senti Bio, a biotechnology company that uses gene circuit technology to create cell and gene therapies that can sense and respond to ailments inside the body, reports Sohini Podder for Reuters. “The way I like to think about it – just like you can program a computer with different programs or different maps, we can do the same thing with medicines,” says Lu.