Biobot Analytics, an MIT startup, is testing sewage in regions across the U.S. as part of an effort to detect where the coronavirus is circulating “even before people start showing up at hospitals and clinics and before they start lining up for Covid-19 tests,” writes Maggie fox for CNN.
STAT reporter Kate Sheridan spotlights the work of Kartik Ramamoorthi PhD ’14 and his gene therapy company Encoded. Sheridan explains that Encoded’s first gene therapy will “target Dravet syndrome — a rare condition that can cause seizures, cognitive deficits, and mobility problems.”
Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of The Engine, speaks with Forbes reporter David Jeans about the second round of funding raised by The Engine and how the venture is looking to help support tough tech ideas. “These are things with often longer [investment] timeframes,” Rae says. “They’ve almost always been backed by government-led research, and now they are ready to translate into companies.”
TechCrunch reporter Danny Crichton writes that The Engine has announced a second round of funding aimed at supporting tough tech startups. Crichton notes that, “with this latest news from The Engine, it seems clear that Boston’s tough tech ecosystem will continue to have a pipeline of interesting and compelling companies.”
Cometeer, an MIT startup, offers a new way to deliver and consume craft coffee at home, reports Elizabeth Segran for Fast Company. The coffee arrives in the form of frozen pucks to help "retain all the complex flavors of the bean, as if a coffee expert had brewed it for you.”
New York Times reporter Steve Lohr highlights the technology startup Ultranauts, which was founded by two MIT graduates and follows a “distinctive set of policies and practices to promote diversity and inclusion among employees.”
Engine CEO Katie Rae speaks with Arielle Pardes of Wired about the need to invest in companies that are tackling the world’s most urgent problems. “We back transformational technology that could shape a market and solve a huge world problem all in a go,” says Rae. “But it requires patience, it requires capital and it requires imagination on how to get these types of companies to market.”
Writing for Scientific American, Carolyn Barber spotlights how researchers from MIT are developing cheap, fast and easy to use diagnostics for Covid-19 that can deliver results in minutes. “They are called lateral flow assays, but manifestly they are paper-strip tests that have an antibody embedded on filter paper,” writes Barber. “If a saliva sample has coronavirus present, the antibody will bind that viral antigen, turning the test positive, much like a pregnancy test works.”
WHDH spotlights MIT startup E25Bio, which is developing a new rapid test to diagnose Covid-19. The test being developed by E25Bio is a paper strip that can deliver test results in 15 minutes, WHDH explains.
TechCrunch reporter Zach Whittaker writes about Butlr, an MIT startup that has developed passive infrared sensors that use a “mix of wireless, battery-powered hardware and artificial intelligence to track people’s movements indoors without violating their privacy.”
Architects from MIT and Generate Technologies have designed Boston’s first cross-laminated timber (CLT) building, a “’revolutionary’ type of timber [that] promises to reduce emissions that cause climate change, create affordable housing and jumpstart a new job-producing, homegrown industry in New England,” reports Bruce Gellerman and Kathleen McNerney for WBUR.
TechCrunch reporter Ingrid Lunden spotlights Ginger, an MIT startup “that works with organizations and their healthcare providers to provide employees with an app-based way to connect with coaches to talk through their issues and suggest ways forward,” reports Ingrid Lunden for TechCrunch.
The Engine has announced that it plans to expand into a new location at 750 Main Street to better accommodate the early-stage tough-tech startups that the MIT subsidiary serves. “Renovations to create offices, labs, and fabrication space are scheduled to start at the end of the year; they are expected to open by early 2022,” reports John Chesto for The Boston Globe.
MIT alumna Payal Kadakia speaks with New York Times reporter David Gelles about her startup ClassPass, a platform that allows users to access a myriad of fitness classes. Kadakia explains that she was inspired to attend MIT, as “the curriculum is so mathematical. Everything is numbers. It was this idea of this world that I lived in.”
STAT reporter Kate Sheridan spotlights MIT startup Lyra Therapeutics, which is developing a long-acting treatment for chronic rhinosinusitis.