Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Times Higher Ed’s Jack Grove about the importance of maintaining economic and political discussions in higher ed. “It is fine for academics to speak on such issues as long as you can keep that separate from your classrooms and for what constitutes high-quality research,” says Acemoglu. “There are special times when academics should speak out.”
In an interview with NPR’s “Short Wave” host Emily Kwong, Prof. Mark Drela attempts to ease flight anxiety by explaining the science behind flying. “Airplanes are designed to withstand very, very extreme turbulence,” says Drela. “Even the most violent imaginable turbulence that you’ve ever felt, the airplane can withstand loads maybe three times bigger…There is a very big safety margin on how aircrafts are built.”
Prof. Abhijit Banerjee speaks with Financial Times reporter John Reed about global politics and the increased need for trust in economists. On his book, Poor Economics, Banerjee says, “I think we have always thought that economic ideas were too important to be left out of the public discourse. There is a sense in which we think economics does a disservice to ourselves and the world by wrapping ourselves in this omniscient jargon.”
Inside Higher Ed has included MIT on their list of favorite college holiday greetings this year, reports Johanna Alonso. In this year’s animated video, “A student walks through the snow-dusted hallway, eventually happening upon an atrium where her classmates are playing instruments crafted from ice, sledding and crafting a snow beaver in the image of the institution’s mascot,” writes Alonso.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu highlights the importance of adopting alternative technologies in the face of AI advancements, reports Jared Newman for Fast Company. “We need investment for alternative approaches to AI, and alternative technologies, those that I would say are more centered on making workers more productive, and providing better information to workers,” says Acemoglu.
Forbes reporter Bruce Dorminey spotlights Donald Douglas, a graduate of the class of 1914. “Douglas christened his company, Douglas Aircraft and built his first planes under contract with the U.S. Navy,” explains Dorminey. “The early most successful model was known as the Douglas Torpedo 2, a single engine seaplane. But the DT2 had to be heavily modified to make it suitable for a trip around the world. Douglas increased the DT2 biplane’s range from 275 miles to over 2000 miles.”
Newsweek reporter Tom Howarth spotlights MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems as they announced plans to “build the world's first grid-scale commercial nuclear fusion power plant” in Virginia. “The plant is expected to generate 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 150,000 homes or large industrial facilities,” writes Howarth.
In a wide-ranging interview with NHK (broadcast in Japanese), President Sally Kornbluth discusses MIT’s innovation ecosystem, the MIT Climate Project and how MIT faculty work to help nurture their students’ creativity. "We give students the opportunity to research real-world projects and see their impact on society," says Kornbluth. “We should focus on bringing out the creativity of students, their individual creativity. Almost everyone you meet at a place like MIT wants to start a company. Nurturing this kind of talent is essential in the long run to the incredible success we see at American universities.”
Using Cortico, a nonprofit collaboration with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication that aims “to facilitate conversations and spot themes across a large number of conversations,” NPR’s Morning Edition began a new project to learn more about communities, big and small, across the United States. “This project yielded hours and hours of taped conversations,” reports NPR. “So we used Cortico's AI tools and a prototype from MIT to search for shared themes across all the recordings so that we could listen more closely.”
Forbes reporter Joe McKendrick spotlights a study by researchers from the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence evaluating “the performance of humans alone, AI alone, and combinations of both.” The researchers found that “human–AI systems do not necessarily achieve better results than the best of humans or AI alone,” explains graduate student Michelle Vaccaro and her colleagues. “Challenges such as communication barriers, trust issues, ethical concerns and the need for effective coordination between humans and AI systems can hinder the collaborative process.”
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), MIT astronomers have spotted “small space rocks – including some just dozens of feet in length, the tiniest ever discovered in our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter,” reports Robin George Andrews for National Geographic. “This work helps to fill in astronomers’ understanding of the asteroid belt, the wreckage left behind from the inner solar system’s formation—and it’s always nice to spy more of those rocky time capsules for future study,” explains Andrews.
Lisa Su '90, SM '91, PhD '94, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), has been named Time’s 2024 CEO of the Year, reports Orianna Rosa Royle for Fortune. In 2012, Su joined “AMD as senior vice president and general manager of the company’s global business units,” writes Royle. “Just two years later she was promoted to AMD’s CEO becoming the first woman to hold to role since the company’s founding in 1969.”
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinout, has announced plans to “build its first fusion power plant in Virginia, with the aim of generating zero-emissions electricity there in the early 2030s,” reports Raymond Zhong for The New York Times. “The proposed facility is among the first to be announced that would harness nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun, to produce power commercially, a long-elusive goal that scientists have pursued for the better part of a century,” explains Zhong.
MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems has shared their plans “to build its first commercial power plant” in Virginia, reports Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “Commonwealth aims to build a complete power plant with a fusion machine generating heat used to spin turbines and make 400 megawatts of electric power, enough to supply 150,000 homes, by the mid-2030s,” explains Pressman.
MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems has announced plans to build the “world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant in Virginia, to generate power by the early 2030s,” reports Timothy Gardner for Reuters. The project, “could revolutionize the global energy industry by tapping into a virtually limitless power source, similar to that which fuels the stars,” writes Gardner.