MIT spinout Superpedestrian plans to begin building electric bikes for companies that rent shareable bikes, writes Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. Bray notes that Assaf Biderman, Superpedestrian chief executive, feels that, “adding electric motors to shared bikes should sharply increase their popularity.”
MIT spinout Ginkgo Bioworks is highlighted on the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, reports CNBC’s Andrew Zaleski. Zaleski notes that Ginkgo Bioworks, “has developed an automated process for combining genetic parts that has made it the largest designer of printed DNA in the world. That breakthrough has positioned the start-up to change the face of a variety of industries.”
Ucare.ai, which was cofounded by MIT alumnus Neal Liu, is applying AI to the healthcare system in an effort to better serve “patients, health providers and those who pay the bills,” writes Jon Russell for TechCrunch. The company uses “deep learning and neural network algorithms” to predict patterns in an effort to “reduce preventable hospitalization, and, in turn, save on costs and hassles.”
The Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner discusses the impact of Cambridge biotech company Biogen, cofounded by Prof. Phil Sharp, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. “The company has become the biggest oak tree of the Massachusetts biotech sector,” writes Kirsner, “not only because it is still standing after four decades, but because it has dropped a lot of acorns.”
Co-founded by Prof. Feng Zheng, Beam Therapeutics, which uses CRISPR to treat disease, has secured $87 million in initial funding, reports Clive Cookson for Financial Times. Beam is the first company to use base editing, which changes the chemical “letters” of genetic code without cutting it, similar to “moving from scissors-and-paste to editing text with a sharp pencil,” explains Cookson.
Devra First, food writer for The Boston Globe, visits Spyce, the robot kitchen restaurant created by four MIT alumni. “When it comes to matters of taste, we (still) need people,” says First. “The Spyce inventors enlisted famed chef Daniel Boulud, who is culinary director of and an investor in the company.”
Yobe, a company co-founded by alumnus S. Hamid Nawab, uses a signal processing device to make it easier for machines to identify a specific voice in noise or among other voices. This technology has potential applications for “law enforcement, hearing aid manufacturers and meeting transcription services,” writes Ron Miller for TechCrunch.
In a commentary on CNBC, graduate student J. Daniel Kim and a co-author describe research with Prof. Pierre Azoulay and the U.S. Census Bureau on the average age of successful entrepreneurs. By working with the U.S. Census Bureau, they were able “to examine all businesses launched in the U.S. between 2007 and 2014, encompassing 2.7 million founders.”
Alumni Keith Dionne and Frank Gentile, who met as graduate students in 1983, have launched a biotech company based on how cells detoxify and repair themselves, reports Jonathan Saltzman of The Boston Globe. Saltzman explains that by creating drugs to induce a process called autophagy, Dionne and Gentile hope to “help cells rid themselves of debris associated with diseases” like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
New research from Sloan finds that entrepreneurs in their 40s are more successful than those in their 20s, writes Amy Wilkinson for The Wall Street Journal. The researchers also show that older company founders “were 125% more successful if they were previously employed in the particular sector in which they were starting a new business,” explains Wilkinson.
Forbes contributor Frederick Daso describes the vision of two mechanical engineering alumni, Victoria Gregory and Gabriel Alba-Rivera, who co-founded Magis Industries, which develops consumer products based on viral social media trends. “Going forward,” writes Daso, “the team hopes to not only develop more products, but also continue to improve the process of product development itself.”
In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, Alex Amouyel, executive director of MIT Solve, explains how the initiative is ‘crowdsolving’ thorny global problems through open innovation. “We need to source ideas from innovators all around the world to find the next breakthroughs,” argues Amouyel. “We know talent and ingenuity exist everywhere.”
NBC Boston’s Brian Shactman reports from Spyce, a new Boston restaurant established by four alumni that uses a robotic kitchen to deliver healthy food fast. As students at MIT, the group was “sick of paying so much money for decent food,” says Schactman. “Doing what MIT students do best, they decided to invent something to solve the problem.”
Andy Rosen writes for The Boston Globe about a new restaurant established by MIT alumni that uses a robotic kitchen to deliver affordable, healthy food that’s “ready in just a few minutes.” Rosen notes that “the company started with the help of a couple of grants from MIT in 2015, the year it built its first prototype.”
Spyce, a robotic kitchen created by four alumni, will open in Boston’s Downtown Crossing this May. The group “built their first prototype in [an MIT] fraternity basement in 2015; now they have patent-pending technology and backing from acclaimed chef Daniel Boulud,” writes Jenna Pelletier of Boston Magazine.