| Robotic Backflips | | | | | | A new robotic cheetah is light on its feet, with agility rivaling a champion gymnast. It can bend and swing its legs, walking upright or upside down, and trot over uneven terrain about twice as fast as an average person can walk. It is the first four-legged robot to do a backflip. Full story via MIT News | Watch the video → |
| Addressing the promises and challenges of artificial intelligence Final day of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing celebration explores enthusiasm and caution about AI’s rising prominence in society. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| Tissue model reveals how RNA will act on the liver Studies could speed the development of new treatments for liver disease. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| Learning to study a painful past Lerna Ekmekçioğlu studies pioneering Armenian women of the 19th and 20th centuries — and helps other scholars enter her field. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| Forced from home in Boston’s Chinatown A new report finds 80 percent of Chinatown residents in Boston report housing insecurity caused primarily by unaffordable rents. Full story via DUSP → | |
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| 2019 MacVicar Faculty Fellows named Professors Angrist, Demaine, Jones, and Taylor receive MIT's highest honor in undergraduate teaching. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| How artificial intelligence will change health care // CNBC Professors Regina Barzilay and Dina Katabi discuss how AI could transform the field of medicine. Barzilay explains that her goal is “to teach machines to do stuff that humans cannot do, for instance predict who is going to get cancer within two years.” Full story via CNBC → |
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| Traveling the world to collect 💩 for the good of humankind // New Scientist “What we are doing is taking a snapshot of the biodiversity of human gut microbes on Earth today,” explains Professor Eric Alm of his work building a repository of gut microbes, “and then preserving that for future generations so that we always have the biodiversity that co-evolved with us stored somewhere.” Full story via New Scientist → |
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| A young woman’s guide to networking // Financial Times Alumni networks at business schools like MIT’s Sloan School of Management can be instrumental in helping young women land jobs. “There’s a secret code among those from some schools to help each other out,” explains Sloan graduate Angela Xu MBA ’16. Full story via Financial Times → |
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| Why Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman is investing in artificial intelligence // CNBC President L. Rafael Reif and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman discuss the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “We are integrating into all the disciplines we have those computing and AI tools, so every student here, no matter what he or she majors in, will be very comfortable using these new tools to practice their profession,” explains Reif. Full story via CNBC → |
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| | | MIT students captured numerous honors in the 2018 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, earning 17 out of the top 27 scores. Yuan Yao and Shengtong Zhang were named Putnam Fellows, a distinction given to the top five individual contestants, and Danielle Wang received the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, given to the top female contestant. It was her second win in the category. Pictured here, left to right, are contestants Shengtong Zhang, Danielle Wang, Junyao Peng, Yunkun Zhou, Yuan Yao, Ashwin Sah, and coach Yufei Zhao, an assistant professor of mathematics. Full story via MIT News → |
| | | MIT’s Strobe Project Lab was created by the late Professor Harold “Doc” Edgerton. MIT students execute a project of their own choosing, with a focus on how to work effectively as a team. For this project, Jessica Adams, Marina Zhang, Alexis Vivar, and Janice Chu wanted to capture two paint balls colliding in mid-air. Success required firing the paint balls simultaneously, detecting the speed of the paintballs in flight, then firing a strobe light at the desired moment after the collision. The team selected a strobe light that turns on and off in less than one-millionth of a second to create this fantastic shot. Learn more via the Edgerton Center → |
| | | MIT is home to a vibrant community of women working in energy. From graduate students to professors and CEOs, these individuals are pushing boundaries in the fields of solar energy, transportation, nuclear energy, policy, and beyond. Get to know them in a new interactive from the MIT Energy Initiative! View the interactive → |
This edition of the MIT Weekly was brought to you by a match made in heaven. 🖨️
Thanks for reading, and enjoy your week!
—Maia, MIT News Office |
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