In honor of Popular Science’s 150th year, reporter Bill Gourgey highlights Prof. Mark Drela and John Langford ’79, MA ’84, PhD ’87 for their work in crafting Perseus, a robotic data-gathering drone used to ply Earth’s polar vortex in July 1992.
Julie Chen ’86, SM ’88, PhD ’91 has been named the next chancellor of UMass Lowell, reports Shirley Leung for The Boston Globe. “With three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has been a fixture on campus for 25 years,” writes Leung. “Chen is considered one of the region’s leading experts in nanotechnology, earning her the nickname ‘nanoqueen’ in a field that builds structures and devices working at an atomic scale.”
Forbes reporter Trond Arne Undheim spotlights the “Manufacturing at MIT Symposium: 2022 and Beyond” conference. “MIT appears to be renewing its manufacturing research and innovation efforts at a pivotal time, with a four-fold focus on technology, workforce development, policy efforts and innovation,” writes Undheim.
Julie Chen '86, SM '88, PhD '91 has been named the next chancellor of UMass Lowell, reports the AP. “I am honored to be selected by President Meehan and the board of trustees as the university’s next chancellor, and I’m excited to work with our great faculty, staff, supporters and partners to provide growing numbers of students with this UMass Lowell advantage in the years ahead,” said Chen.
MIT researchers developed a suitcase-sized, portable desalination device that can turn salt water into drinking water with the push of a button, reports Elissaveta M. Brandon for Fast Company. Brandon writes that the device could be a “vital tool for remote island communities, seafaring cargo ships, and even refugee camps located near water.”
MIT scientists have created a new tool that can improve robotic wearables, reports Danica D’Souza for Mashable. “The tool provides a pipeline for digital creating pneumatic actuators – devices that power motion with compressed air in many wearables and robotics,” writes D’Souza.
Motherboard reporter Audrey Carleton writes that MIT researchers have developed a “filter-less portable desalination device that uses an electrical field generated by solar energy to repel charged particles like salt, bacteria, and viruses.” Research Scientist Junghyo Yoon explains that: “All indicators tell us that water scarcity is a growing problem for everyone due to rising sea levels. We don’t hope for a grim future, but we want to help people be prepared for it.”
Robots constructed by 32 students competed in the annual 2.007 Robot Competition, which was held in person for the first time in three years, reports Lisa Gresci for 7 News. “The atmosphere is absolutely electric,” explains third year student Joshua Rohrbaugh. “It’s really amazing we can celebrate this kind of academic competition in this kind of way. It’s almost like a sporting event and that gets me hyped up.”
Prof. Silvio Micali speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Laurence Darmiento about his predictions for the future of crypto. “The moment the blockchain starts to be used for transactions, the few blockchains that are really capable of transacting at a very low cost, they’re going to emerge, in my opinion,” says Micali. “When traditional finance starts getting on the blockchain, you’re going to see the blockchains that are really used in a massive and transactional way are going to accelerate.”
Financial Times reporter William D. Cohan profiles Robert Joseph Scaringe SM ’07, PhD ’09 and his personal and professional career in developing Rivian, an electric vehicle technology company dedicated to building vehicles that change the way we consume fossil fuels. “Scaringe has been pining to run his own car company since he was a 17-year-old growing up on the Atlantic coast of Florida, just south of Cape Canaveral. ‘If you were to go in my bedroom as a kid, you’d find [car] hoods under the bed and windshields in the closet,’ he says.”
Lecturer John Liu and Mary Ellen Wiltrout, director of online and blended learning initiatives in the Department of Biology, share how the pandemic has transformed the way in which universities approach digital teaching. Liu noted that the pandemic had “forced [universities] to rethink community and support…on a class level but maybe on a program level” as well as to refocus on how teaching modes best served learning objectives,” reports Times Higher Education.
CSAIL researchers have developed a robotic glove that utilizes pneumatic actuation to serve as an assistive wearable, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “Soft pneumatic actuators are intrinsically compliant and flexible, and combined with intelligent materials, have become the backbone of many robots and assistive technologies – and rapid fabrication with our design tool can hopefully increase ease and ubiquity,” says graduate student Yiyue Luo.
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a machine learning technique for proposing new molecules for drug discovery that ensures suggested molecules can be synthesized in a lab. Coldewey also features how MIT scientists created a new method aimed at teaching robots how to interact with everyday objects.
A new portable, solar-powered desalination device developed by MIT researchers can create potable drinking water with the push of a button, reports Tony Ho Tran for The Daily Beast. “The device doesn’t rely on any filters like traditional desalination machines,” writes Tran. “Instead, it zaps the water with electric currents to remove minerals such as salt particles from the water.”
MIT researchers have developed a new ultrathin material that can turn any rigid surface into a speaker, reports Haje Jan Kamps for TechCrunch. “The loudspeaker could be used in active noise cancellation, for example — combine the speaker tech with some electronics and microphones, and it could cancel out sound,” writes Kamps. “The inventors also envision immersive sound experiences, and other low-energy use cases such as smart devices, etc.”