WHDH speaks with MIT staff member Maia Weinstock, who designed the original concept for the Women of NASA LEGO set. Weinstock explained that she is “really excited to see teachers and parents and kids tell me their stories of how they are going to use the set.”
Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program, writes for The Boston Globe about a new book that spotlights the work of women code breakers during World War II. Blum writes that a number of recent books, “remind us that women have been vitally important to the success of both science and technology — if only we will give them that credit.”
Prof. Regina Barzilay, a breast cancer survivor, participated in a Washington Post Live discussion about “her own experience with the disease and how she uses data and machine learning to advance detection and treatment.”
FOX 25 reporter Bob Dumas features a dance-party lamp developed by MIT researchers aimed at getting girls interested in STEM fields. “There’s research that shows girls, around middle school age, their participation in STEM classes and curriculum starts to drop off," explains Prof. Maria Yang. She adds that she wants to, "get girls back on the STEM train by engaging their interests.”
Nature reporter Anna Nowogrodzki spotlights Prof. Aviv Regev’s quest to map every cell in the human body. “One of the things that makes Aviv special is her enormous bandwidth. I've never met a scientist who thinks so deeply and so innovatively on so many things,” says Dana Pe'er, a computational biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
CNBC reporter Colleen DeBaise speaks with MIT alumna Tish Scolnik about what inspired her to pursue a career in STEM. "There are so many big problems that the world is facing," Scolnik says. "Many of them can't be solved by engineering — but many of them can."
Writing for Make, Gareth Branwyn spotlights Adafruit Industries, which was founded by alumna Limor Fried. Fried explains that she believes the success of Adafruit is based on, “being focused on others, having an unconditional belief that you can be both a good cause and a good company, and seeing risk-taking as your friend and your only real competition as yourself.”
Lauren Camera of U.S. News & World Report speaks to 2017 U.S. News & World Report STEM Leadership Hall of Fame recipients about how to create more interest in STEM fields. President Emerita Susan Hockfield suggests finding a way to ignite a passion for STEM fields because “people are motivated by mission and purpose rather than what they're made to do."
Reporting for WBUR, Karen Weintraub speaks with Profs. Angela Belcher, Sangeeta Bhatia and Paula Hammond about their work developing tiny tools to target cancer cells. Bhatia explains that their collaboration feels like, “a dream team of people that are interested in nanoscience and nanotechnology and focusing those advances on cancer.”
WDEF-12 TV reporter Jordan spotlights Renee Schebler, a graduate of the STEM School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who plans to attend MIT this fall. Schebler developed a programmable bear for her senior business project and explains that “getting kids, especially girls, involved in STEM fields is a true passion of mine.”
Prof. Krystyn Van Vliet speaks with Samantha Boh of The Straits Times. Van Vliet explains that "My work gives me added motivation because at the end of the day you are not just engineering a new toy or learning something for yourself, but engineering a whole process where the outcome has the potential to restore health."
In a column for Huffington Post, Jill Tietjen spotlights the accomplishments of women from MIT, some of whom were inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She notes that Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards, the first woman to graduate from MIT, “was a true renaissance woman leaving a legacy across many fields.”
Science reporter Elizabeth Pennisi spotlights Institute Professor Sallie “Penny” Chisholm’s pioneering research into uncovering the secrets of Prochlorococcus. Prof. Michael Follows says that Chisholm, "has beautifully shown us how this microbe works and how the ocean world is organized."
Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear spotlights an MIT Admissions video that shows “Iron Man” superhero Riri Williams building her iconic suit on campus. Stuart Schmill, dean of admissions, says the Admissions Office videos, which are created as a lighthearted way to announce when admissions decisions will be available, “capture the spirit of this place and what students love to do.”
Clive Cookson of the Financial Times spotlights the work of Institute Professor Emerita Mildred Dresselhaus, who died at 86. Known as the “Queen of Carbon,” Dresselhaus’ research “led the way to round molecules with 60 carbon atoms, known as fullerenes or buckyballs, and ultimately to graphene,” explains Cookson.