Merritt Jenkins MBA '21 co-founded Kodama Systems, a startup developing a semiautonomous timber harvesting machine to remove tree and debris from forests and bury them in an effort to help combat global warming, reports Christopher Helman for Forbes. “Scientists say burying trees can reduce global warming as well—particularly if those trees would otherwise end up burning or decaying, spewing their stored carbon into the air,” writes Helman.
MIT has been ranked among the top universities with the most successful start-up founders according to a new survey, reports Patrick Jack for Times Higher Education.
Institute Prof. Bob Langer speaks with Curiosity podcast hosts Immad Akhynd and Raj Suri about his work in the field of biotechnology, delving into how he has co-founded 40 companies. “I wanted to get out and do some good in the world,” says Langer. “That's where patents come in and that's where companies come in. And I think the challenge of the company is very different because you have what I call a platform technology.”
Forbes reporter Stuart Anderson spotlights a number of international students who became founders of top U.S. AI companies, including MIT alumni Sébastien Boyer MS '16 and Aditya Khosla PhD '16. Boyer co-founded “FarmWise, which employs AI for precision weeding on farms,” and Khosla co-founded PathAI, a biotech startup that uses AI to “optimize the analysis of patient tissue samples and for other clinical and diagnostic purposes,” writes Anderson.
Researchers from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) are using high-temperature superconducting tape as a key part of the design for their tokamak reactor, reports Tom Clynes for IEEE Spectrum. The researchers believe that “this novel approach will allow it to build a high-performance tokamak that is much smaller and less expensive than would be possible with previous approaches,” Clynes notes.
Lynette Seow MBA ’23 co-founded Safe Space Singapore, a B2B2C platform aimed at strengthening “mental resilience by providing tele-therapy care and prevention education,” reports Matt Symonds for Forbes. “Ultimately, I figured that if I wanted to build a Safe Space for people to come to, I had to be one to the people I met,” shares Seow. “If improving mental health is my mission, and a disproportionate percentage of LGBTQ+ people experience mental health struggles, how could I ignore drawing attention to this cause even if it meant being a bit more public about my personal life?"
Researchers from MIT and BU developed the Cleana toilet seat, which is aimed at addressing poor toilet etiquette, reports Katie Thompson for WCVB. “One toilet seat lifts and stays in the up position after the seat is placed down is designed for a more high-traffic commercial space,” writes Thompson. “The residential version, meanwhile, includes a seat and lid that are both designed to automatically lower after use, helping protect the open toilet bowl from small children and pets — as well as creating a better aesthetic look.”
Ali Khademhosseini PhD ’05 founded Omeat, a cultivated meat startup that “enables the cultivation of any meat in a way that is orders-of-magnitude more sustainable and humane than the conventional approach,” reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray spotlights Cleana, a startup launched by engineers from MIT and BU that is developing “a new kind of toilet seat that raises or lowers itself to avoid unwelcome splashes, or to prevent objects from falling accidentally into the bowl.” Bray explains that “the company’s engineers created a semi-automatic seat that must first be raised or lowered by the user. This action powers up a pneumatic system with a built-in timer that waits about 30 seconds and then raises or lowers the seat, depending on the application.”
Alumni Billy Thalheimer and Michael Klinker co-founded Regent, a company that has developed and manufactured an all-electric sea glider, reports WCVB. “A sea glider is a class of vehicle known as a wing in ground (WIG),” says Thalheimer. “So, it flies within a wingspan of the surface at all times, dock to doc, exclusively over water.”
The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship “offers expertise and support to entrepreneurial students across the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” reports Ian Wylie for the Financial Times. “The center’s executive director, Paul Cheek, says fintech companies launched as a result of its support include Sigma Ratings, Posh Technologies, Almond FinTech, Zumma and CashEx,” writes Wylie.
Meghan Maupin MS ’18 has been named CEO of OurX, a Black hair care company that “taps into six years of research and data mining to create hair regimens and education for the scalp and tightly textured hair,” reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch.
Founded by MIT engineers, CubicPV is building a solar-component factory, reports Phred Dvorak for The Wall Street Journal. CubicPV’s process “peels a thin layer of crystallized silicon off the top of the molten material, a technique the company says is faster, cheaper and less wasteful,” explains Dvorak.
Boston Metal, an MIT startup, is developing a new method for producing steel that reduces carbon emissions, reports Catherine Clifford for CNBC. “The main goal of Boston Metal is green steel, but the company will also use its core electrolysis technology to produce tin, niobium, and tantalum metals from what is otherwise considered waste from the mining process,” writes Clifford.
VulcanForms, an MIT startup, is at the “leading edge of a push to transform 3-D printing from a niche technology — best known for new-product prototyping and art-class experimentation — into an industrial force,” writes David Scharfenberg for The Boston Globe. Scharfenberg notes that VulcanForms “could help usher in something new — a high-tech industrialism aimed straight at the country’s most pressing problems.”