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The Hill

Writing for The Hill, Sloan Prof. Catherine Wolfram and UCLA Prof. Kimberly Clausing explore why they feel U.S. politicians should embrace carbon pricing. “2025 will be a big year for Congress to tackle longstanding fiscal issues and further climate policy efforts,” they write. “Before this can happen, politicians need to hear timely arguments backed by up-to-date evidence.”

Marketplace

Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Marketplace reporter Matt Levin about the potential impact of raising the retirement age in the United States. Gruber suggests a new system where retirement age would vary by income. “People who are sufficiently high income, should be expected to work longer and get less in the system,” says Gruber. “People with physically demanding jobs and low income should be able to retire earlier.”

Boston Magazine

A number of MIT faculty and alumni – including Prof. Daniela Rus, Prof. Regina Barzilay, Research Affiliate Haddad Habib, Research Scientist Lex Fridman, Marc Raibert PhD '77, former Postdoc Rana El Kaliouby and Ray Kurzweil '70 – have been named key figures “at the forefront of Boston’s AI revolution,” reports Wyndham Lewis for Boston Magazine. These researchers are “driving progress and reshaping the way we live,” writes Lewis.

Scientific American

Prof. Katharina Ribbeck speaks with Christopher Intagliata of Scientific American’s “Science Quickly” podcast about her research exploring how mucus can treat and prevent disease. “The basic building blocks of mucus that give mucus its gooey nature are these threadlike molecules—they look like tiny bottlebrushes—that display lots and lots of sugar molecules on their backbone,” explains Ribbeck. “And these sugar molecules—we call them glycans—interact with molecules from the immune system and microbes directly. And the exact configuration and density of these sugar molecules is really important for health.”

Bloomberg

Prof. David Autor speaks with Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway about how AI could be leveraged to improve inequality, emphasizing the policy choices governments will need to make to ensure the technology is beneficial to humans. “Automation is not the primary source of how innovation improves our lives,” says Autor. “Many of the things we do with new tools is create new capabilities that we didn’t previously have.”

Politico

MIT researchers have found that “when an AI tool for radiologists produced a wrong answer, doctors were more likely to come to the wrong conclusion in their diagnoses,” report Daniel Payne, Carmen Paun, Ruth Reader and Erin Schumaker for Politico. “The study explored the findings of 140 radiologists using AI to make diagnoses based on chest X-rays,” they write. “How AI affected care wasn’t dependent on the doctors’ levels of experience, specialty or performance. And lower-performing radiologists didn’t benefit more from AI assistance than their peers.”

The Boston Musical Intelligencer

A celebration in Killian Hall featured recent works composed by Professor Peter Child and honored the musician as he prepares to retire after 37 years of teaching and composing at MIT, writes Boston Musical Intelligencer reporter Mark DeVoto. “All of these very different kinds of music demonstrated the protean spirit of Peter Child, showing him as one of the most interesting and heartily youthful composers anywhere in America today,” writes DeVoto. 

Fast Company

Using microwave plasma technology developed at MIT, 6K inc., is turning metals “including scrap, into high-performance materials for various applications,” reports Alex Pasternack for Fast Company. “The process produces no salt or liquid waste, uses just 10% of the water and half of the energy of conventional processes, and reduces costs by half,” writes Pasternack. “Its technique can also precisely control the composition and structure of materials at the atomic level.”

Salon

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have isolated a “protein in human sweat that protects against Lyme disease,” reports Matthew Rozsa for Salon. The researchers believe that if “properly harnessed the protein could form the basis of skin creams that either prevent the disease or treat especially persistent infections,” writes Rosza.

Boston Magazine

Boston Magazine spotlights MIT’s leading role in the AI revolution in the Greater Boston area. “With a $2 million grant from the Department of Defense, MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab combines with a new research group, Project MAC, to create what’s now known as the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Over the next three years, researchers lead groundbreaking machine-learning projects such as the creation of Eliza, a psychotherapy-based computer program that could process languages and establish emotional connections with users (a primordial chatbot, essentially).”

Featured Multimedia

In Creating Art, Thinking Science, students explore the connections between art inquiry and scientific research through visual thinking strategies and emerging technologies. Throughout the semester students analyze tools used for artistic and cultural expression and experiment with technical opportunities to deliver a unique, creative vision.

Driven by curiosity, Jessica Banks SM ’01, ENG ’07 went from studying physics to robotics to running her own furniture company; today, she is best known for hosting “Hack My Home,” a home renovation reality show on Netflix, which launched in 2023.

In this episode of Curiosity Unbounded, President Sally Kornbluth talks with Associate Professor Skylar Tibbits about 4D printing, self-assembling materials, and design at MIT.

In 2.679 (Electronics for Mechanical Systems II), students imagine something they would like to build, learn about electronic principles and how to apply them to create mechanical systems through all stages of design, fabrication to assembly.

MIT's mission is to advance knowledge; to educate students in science, engineering, technology, humanities and social sciences; and to tackle the most pressing problems facing the world today. This is MIT.

Nervous System is a generative design studio that works at the intersection of science, art, and technology. Participants used custom computational design tools to construct surfaces with complex curvature from flat materials like paper, wood, or metal.

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