The Boston Globe’s Angelina Parrillo interviews Jasmina Aganovic ’09 about her beauty company Arcaea, which reconstructs data from extinct flowers to produce fragrances. “I viewed fragrance as this remarkable emotional storytelling category and people don’t view science as being associated with creativity, emotion, or storytelling,” Aganovic says. “I think that that’s very far from the truth.”
The Engine Ventures' CEO and Managing partner Katie Rae talks to Forbes’ Alex Knapp about its recent round of fundraising for investments in startups focused on sustainability, health and infrastructure. Rae also sees opportunities in quantum computing and other new hardware, saying “power and climate and compute all go together.”
Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of the Engine Ventures, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman about The Engine Ventures’ third investment fund, which remains focused on “helping early-stage startups develop and commercialize ‘tough tech,’ which can include anything from fusion power generators to cement made without fossil fuels.” Rae notes: “You see this dynamism not just for climate, but for all things manufacturing, whether it’s biotech, whether it’s AI chips, it is about as an exciting moment as you could get for what we do.”
Forbes selects innovators for the list’s Healthcare & Science category, written by senior contributor Yue Wang. On the list is MIT PhD candidate Yuzhe Yang, who studies AI and machine learning technologies capability to monitor and diagnose illnesses such as Parkinson's disease.
Writing for STAT, Prof. Kevin Esvelt explores how, “the immense potential benefits of biotechnology are profoundly vulnerable to misuse. A pandemic caused by a virus made from synthetic DNA — or even a lesser instance of synthetic bioterrorism — would not only generate a public health crisis but also trigger crippling restrictions on research.” Esvelt adds: “The world has too much to gain from the life sciences to continue letting just anyone obtain DNA sufficient to cause a pandemic.”
Prof. Linda Griffith and Stuart Orkin '67 were named to this year’s Time 100 Health list, which recognizes innovators leading the way to new health solutions. Griffith, who was honored for her work engineering a uterine organoid to study endometriosis, explains that in the future engineered organoids could be used to find the most effective treatments for patients. “We have all the genetic information and all the information from the patient’s exposure to infections, environmental chemicals, and stress that would cause the tissues to become deranged in some way, all captured in that organoid,” Griffith explains.
ShareAmerica reporter Lauren Monsen spotlights Prof. Dina Katabi for her work in advancing medicine with artificial intelligence. “Katabi develops AI tools to monitor patients’ breathing patterns, hear rate, sleep quality, and movements,” writes Monsen. “This data informs treatment for patients with diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s, and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), as well as Rett syndrome, a rare neurological disorder.”
MIT researchers have developed a new type of spring-like device that uses a flexible element to help power biohybrid robots, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The muscle fiber/flexure system can be applied to various kinds of robots in different sizes,” Heater writes, adding that the researchers are, “focused on creating extremely small robots that could one day operate inside the body to perform minimally invasive procedures.”
Prof. Xuanhe Zhao speaks with Amerigo Allegretto of AuntMinnie.com about his work developing a new ultrasound sticker that can measure the stiffness of internal organs and could one day be used for early detection and diagnosis of disease. “Due to the huge potential of measuring the rigidity of deep internal organs, we believe we can use this to monitor organ health,” Zhao explains.
Prof. Ron Weiss co-founded Strand Therapeutics, a biotech company developing mRNA therapies, reports Emily Mullin for Wired. “The notion is that genetic circuits can really have significant impact on safety and efficacy,” says Weiss. “This begins to really open up the door for creating therapies whose sophistication can match the underlying complexity of biology.”
Scientific American reporter Payal Dhar spotlights how MIT engineers developed a beating, biorobotic replica of the human heart that could be used to “simulate the workings of both a healthy organ and a diseased one.” The replica, "which pumps a clear fluid instead of blood, is hooked up to instruments that measure blood flow, blood pressure, and more," writes Dhar. "It’s also customizable: the user can change the heart rate, blood pressure and other parameters, then watch how these changes affect the heart’s function in real time.”
Researchers from MIT have developed, “nanoelectronics they hope can one day enter the brain and treat conditions like Alzheimer’s by monitoring some of these brain patterns,” reports Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon. “Their device, which they call Cell Rover, serves as a sort of antenna that can help external devices monitor cells.”
Prof. Ritu Raman has developed centimeter-scale robots that use biological muscle, reports Liam Drew for Nature. “Raman is now developing muscle systems connected to neurons that can trigger contraction, just as they exist in animals,” writes Drew. “In the longer term, she aims to use networks of biological neurons that can sense external stimuli as well, enabling them to move in response to environmental cues.”
Grace Colón PhD '95, a board member of the MIT Corporation, writes for The Hill about how to transform cities into biotech innovations hubs. “The best path to biotech success will be different for each city,” writes Colón. “But by building on institutional strengths, investing in workers, and knocking down barriers to success, there’s no reason more of them can’t get there.”
Jasmina Aganovic '09 speaks with MSNBC reporter Daniela Pierre-Bravo about her mission to transform the beauty industry by creating more sustainable products through her startup Arcaea. “The way that I’ve always viewed this industry is that it touches almost every single human being on this planet every single day,” says Aganovic. The beauty industry also, “plays such an important emotional role in our day-to-day lives in terms of self-expression and self-care, the ability to escape when things are a little bit tough, those like little small indulgences.”