Alumni/ae

Ronald Davis III '18, SM '22, PhD '24 speaks with Jason Groves of Las Cruces Sun-News about how his research at both MIT and an Army Department of Defense lab inspired his interest in applying AI technologies to improve wireless communications, work he is now using as the foundation of his startup VectorWave. "When I think of a student earning multiple degrees from a school such as MIT along with a Ph.D., I'm blown away that it could come from a small place like Las Cruces [New Mexico]," says Brandon Sprague, Davis’ former high school mathematics teacher. 

Asadej Kongsiri MBA '99 has been named the new President of The Stock Exchange of Thailand, reports Anuchit Nguyen for Bloomberg. The stock exchange says “with Asadej’s extensive experience in the financial markets, board members ‘are confident in his ability to lead and navigate the evolving financial landscape,’” writes Nguyen.

Mario Ho '17, cofounded NIP Group, "an esports organization with a team of 125 pro gamers from China, Europe and Brazil," reports Zinnia Lee for Forbes. “NIP Group said it plans to expand into new markets such as Southeast Asia, North America, the Middle East, Japan and Korea,” explains Lee. “The company added that it would further expand its businesses in areas including esports education, digital collectibles and licensing of intellectual properties.”

Harrison White '50, PhD '55, “a theoretical physicist-turned-sociologist who upended the study of human relations and society” has died at age 94, reports Michael Rosenwald for The New York Times. “With his background in physics, Professor White viewed humans as nodes within social networks,” writes Rosenwald. “Those networks operated in complex ways that shaped economic mobility, financial markets, language and other social phenomena.”

NBC News reporter Alex Koller spotlights Noubar Afeyan PhD '87 and the messages he shared as commencement speaker for the 2024 MIT graduating class. "I'm utterly unreasonable and an eternal optimist," said Afeyan, adding that to tackle improbable challenges having "a special kind of optimism" can help. 

Writing for The New York Times, Kenji López-Alt '02 slices into his research with Rui Viana '05 on the best method for cutting an onion. Using “computer models of the cross section of an onion,” López-Alt and Viana simulated “various cutting geometries and to calculate basic information, such as the number of pieces cut with each method, their average size and the standard deviation from the norm within that group" to see which method is a cut above the rest. 

Tomás Vega SM '19 is CEO and co-founder of Augmental, a startup helping people with movement impairments interact with their computer devices, reports Popular Science’s Andrew Paul. Seeking to overcome the limitations of most brain-computer interfaces, the company’s first product is the MouthPad, leveraging the tongue muscles.“Our hope is to create an interface that is multimodal, so you can choose what works for you,” said Vega. “We want to be accommodating to every condition.”

TechCrunch’s Tim De Chant has a look at MIT spinoff SiTration, which has developed a new process to reat mining wastewater and filter our critical minerals using silicon. “SiTration’s filters are built on the same style of wafers that are used to make computer chips and solar panels, though using a cheaper grade of silicon,” De Chant explains.

Forbes reporter Michael Bernick spotlights Ultranauts, founded by Rajesh Anandan ’95 SM ‘96 and Art Shectman ‘95, which provides software testing services, quality engineering and test automation, data governance, and a recently launched suite of AI products to improve employee performance. The company employees people in 30 states, “75% of whom are neurodivergent.”

Richard Nieva reports on recent newcomers to Forbes’ 2024 Midas List, which features the magazine’s picks for the world’s best capital investors. Wesley Chan SB '00 SM '01 spent 14 years at Google, which “informed his focus on consumer tech startups,” Nieva writes.

Conner Galloway SB '08 SM '09 and Alexander Valys SB '08 lead Xcimer Energy Company, a startup seeking to provide economical nuclear fusion power and “pursuing what’s best described as a ground-up redesign of the underlying technology,” writes Tim De Chant for TechCrunch. “This is proven science,” Galloway, the CEO of Xcimer CEO, explains. “It’s just a matter of building a big enough laser, cheap enough laser and efficient enough laser.”

C. Gordon Bell ’57, SM 57 was a “computer pioneer always looking ten steps ahead and building that version of the world,” writes Gizmodo’s Matt Novak. Bell was, “a true visionary in the world of computing who helped design some of the first minicomputers in the 1960s," Novak adds. 

Called the “Frank Lloyd Wright of computers,” technology visionary C. Gordon Bell ’57, SM '57, “the master architect in the effort to create smaller, affordable, interactive computers that could be clustered into a network,” has died. “He was among a handful of influential engineers whose designs formed the vital bridge between the room-size models of the mainframe era and the advent of the personal computer,” notes Glenn Rifkin for The New York Times. 

MIT spinoff Electrified Thermal Solutions is developing electrically charged bricks that generate and store heat as part of an effort to one day replace fossil fuels, reports Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News. “If you are running an industrial plant where you’re making cement or steel or glass or ceramics or chemicals or even food or beverage products, you burn a lot of fossil fuels,” explains Daniel Stack SM '17, PhD '21, chief executive of Electrified Thermal Solutions. “Our mission is to decarbonize industry with electrified heat.”

In an article for Fast Company, Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota offers five takeaways concerning the potential impact of AI on healthcare. Understanding AI’s healthcare potential “is crucial for business leaders and policymakers to foster an environment where AI and other analytics tools enhance rather than complicate societal outcomes,” Hayes-Mota writes.