In the Media

Michael Hecht, associate director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, speaks with Charlie McKenna of The Boston Globe about the MIT-designed Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE). “If we could plant a tree on Mars, it would do what MOXIE is doing. But we can’t, so we build a machine to do it,” he said. “If we’re serious about having a presence on Mars and having a research base, we need a way to make oxygen.”

A team of researchers from MIT and other institutions have created a new sensor that could be used to sniff out disease, reports Charlie Jones for the BBC. Research scientist Andreas Mershin says "Imagine a day when smartphones can send an alert for potentially being at risk for highly aggressive prostate cancer, years before a doctor notices a rise in PSA levels.”

Fast Company reporter Ruth Reader writes that researchers from MIT and other institutions have developed a new miniaturized detector that could be used to detect diseases by smell. “This paper was about integrating all the techniques that we know can work independently and finding out what of all this can go and become [part of] an integrated smartphone-based diagnostic,” says research scientist Andreas Mershin.

Writing for Wired, Keith Gillogly spotlights how MIT researchers have devised a new technique that could lead to the development of lab-grown wood and other biomaterials. “The hope is that, if this becomes a developed process for producing plant materials, you could alleviate some of [the] pressures on our agricultural lands. And with those reduced pressures, hopefully we can allow more spaces to remain wild and more forests to remain in place,” says graduate student Ashley Beckwith,

Graduate student Lauren Dykman speaks with Atlantic reporter Sabrina Imbler about her quest to investigate the life cycle of the deep-sea trematode, a type of parasitic worm.

Wall Street Journal reporter Dieter Holger spotlights the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. Holger notes that in January “IBM joined a dozen other companies—including Apple Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Boeing Co. —as the inaugural members of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium to develop technologies to combat climate change.”

Writing for The Boston Globe, AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin and  Research Associate Luke Yoquinto explore how Greater Boston could serve as an innovation hub for aging populations. “By making groundbreaking creativity and inventiveness for older adults both seen and felt, Greater Boston and New England will be able to offer the world a new vision of old age,” they write.

Graduate student Carmelo Ignaccolo speaks with Forbes contributor Rebecca Ann Hughes about his decision to move back to his hometown in Sicily during the Covid-19 pandemic and his work helping a local organization map networks of remote working hubs, as part of an effort to help support the local economy. “It was a nice idea of combining work but also local support for communities which have been left behind, especially in southern Italy,” says Ignaccolo.

Postdoc Shriya Srinivasan has devised a new way to perform amputation surgery that would reconnect dangling nerves to the skin and help restore a patient’s sense of touch, reports Anissa Gardizy for The Boston Globe. “I would hope that in the next 10 years, people are offered the ability to have these advanced techniques incorporated into their initial surgery,” she said.

Prof. Amy Glasmeier speaks with Greg Iacuurci of CNBC about the calculator she and her colleagues developed that displays what an actual living wage is in different areas of the country. “People are not surviving on the minimum wage,” says Glasmeier, 

Mashable spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new type of amputation surgery that could “help amputees better control their residual muscles and sense where their ‘phantom limb’ is in space.” 

Financial Times reporter Michael Pooler highlights MIT startup Boston Metals, which has devised “a technology for making brand-new steel without emissions using electricity.”

Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81 has been selected to lead the WTO, writes David McHugh for the AP. “Her first priority would be quickly addressing the economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as by lifting export restrictions on supplies and vaccines and encouraging the manufacturing of vaccines in more countries,” writes McHugh.

New York Times reporter Ana Swanson highlights how MIT alumna Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81 has been named the new director-general of the WTO. Okonjo-Iweala will be the first woman and first African to lead the WTO. “It’s been a long and tough road, full of uncertainty, but now it’s the dawn of a new day and the real work can begin,” she said.

A new study by MIT researchers finds that political beliefs can help bring people together on social media networks, reports Brooke Crothers for Fox News. On both sides, users were roughly three times more likely to form social ties with strangers who identify with the same party, compared to "counter-partisans.”