MIT News Newsletter

	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
October 28, 2016
MIT News: top stories
A weekly digest of the Institute’s research and innovation

MIT launches new venture for world-changing entrepreneurs

The Engine will provide funding, space, and expertise — powering a network of innovation networks.

Automating big-data analysis

With new algorithms, data scientists could accomplish in days what has traditionally taken months.

3-D-printed structures shrink when heated

Counterintuitive “metamaterial” may enable heat-resistant circuit boards.

Fighting cancer with the power of immunity

New treatment elicits two-pronged immune response that destroys tumors in mice.

MRIs for fetal health

Algorithm could help analyze fetal scans to determine whether interventions are warranted.

Finding patterns in corrupted data

New model-fitting technique is efficient even for data sets with hundreds of variables.

In the Media

President L. Rafael Reif writes for The Boston Globe about The Engine, a new venture built by MIT to support startups tackling the world’s pressing challenges. Reif writes that The Engine will provide a model of support that nurtures “high-impact ideas and speeds them into the world while helping our regional innovation ecosystem flourish.”

New York Times reporter Randy Kennedy writes about “The Enemy,” a virtual reality project created by Prof. Fox Harrell and Visiting Scholar Ben Khelifa that is aimed at allowing visitors to learn from individuals on both sides of long-standing conflicts. The project “holds the promise of opening up new frontiers for the integration of journalism and art,” writes Kennedy.

MIT, Boston Medical Center and Post Office Square Redevelopment Corp. are joining forces to purchase solar power from a new solar farm being constructed in North Carolina, writes Jessica Bartlett for the Boston Business Journal. Bartlett writes that the project is “the largest renewable-energy project ever to be constructed in the U.S. through an alliance of different buyers.”

Zeninjor Enwemeka reports for WBUR that MIT is launching an effort aimed at helping startups bring scientific inventions from the lab to the marketplace. Enwemeka notes that in addition to providing space, funding and support for startups, The Engine “will tap into the region's innovation hubs and aims to create an innovation network across the area.”