Maya Levy '21 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear about “The 24-Hour T Ride,” a play written by Levy and friends as part of their work with the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble group. The group is “known to produce 24-hour shows in which only the title is decided on beforehand,” explains Levy. “You can expect silly incredibly local scenes that would not hold up if you performed it anywhere else. You can expect the actors to be having a wonderful time.”
Boston Globe reporter Malcom Gay writes that Michael John Gorman, “a museum professional who has created and run several organizations devoted to science and the arts,” has been named the next director of the MIT Museum. At the MIT Museum, "Gorman inherits a dynamic new cultural venue replete with gallery space, forum areas, learning labs, a public maker hub, and collection of some 1.5 million objects,” Gay writes.
WBUR reporter Solon Kelleher spotlights “List Projects 29” – the final show in a series at the MIT List Visual Arts Center that focuses on “collaborations between artists.” The show features work from Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV. “The artists co-founded the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art and share a vision for artist-led spaces and art that engages with the wider community,” writes Kelleher.
Keelin Caldwell, director of engagement for the MIT Museum, speaks with GBH host Jared Bowen about the MIT Museum’s After Dark series, including their upcoming event, “Beyond The Fold,” which will allow participants to explore the art and science of folding. Caldwell explains that the After Dark series happens monthly, noting “there is always a different theme, and that theme is an opportunity to both narrow in but stay broad, and we really try to have activities that appeal to a lot of different people.”
Architectural Record senior editor Leopoldo Villardi spotlights the new Kendall/MIT MBTA gateway. “Falling under the jurisdiction of the MBTA are three precisely canted volumes—one enclosing a staircase, another accommodating an escalator, and the last housing an elevator—that peek up above the ground plane and lead to the station below," writes Villardi. "But beyond these access points, the street level is ostensibly MIT’s campus. A sleek, streamlined canopy, supported by a field of 26-foot-tall columns, hovers over the three prismatic kiosks to unify the composition.”
Lecturer James Aloisi and several students from his urban planning and policy course write for Commonwealth Beacon about their proposals for creating a better public transportation connection between Kendall Square and Logan Airport. “It should not be acceptable that, in greater Boston in the 21st Century, a traveler cannot easily and conveniently connect by transit from one of the nation’s most important innovation and academic centers to the international airport, a mere three miles away,” writes Aloisi. “We can do better, and we must do better if we want to do more than just pretend that we live in a livable, sustainable region.”
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.”
In a cartoon for The Boston Globe, Sage Stossel spotlights how during the Cambridge Science Festival researchers from the MIT AgeLab spoke about their work during a special presentation at the Cambridge Senior Center. As part of an effort to spur innovations aimed at improving the quality of life for people in their later years, AgeLab researchers have “pursued an array of projects, from researching safer, more automated driving systems to collaborating on ‘smart home’ innovations for facilitating aging in place to the development of interactive robo-pets.”
Holly Metcalf, head coach for the MIT women’s openweight rowing team, speaks with Esteban Bustillos of GBH News about the Survivor Rowing Network, a program aimed at introducing the sport of rowing to cancer survivors. Metcalf is coaching two boats from the Survivor Rowing in the 2023 Head of the Charles Regatta. “What I love about being here is students are visionary. And big world problems, they want to solve them. So maybe here at MIT one of my students may have an answer to getting rid of cancer,” she said. “That’s here. It’s all about finding answers through collaboration and that’s what rowing is, it’s a collaboration of mind, of body.”
MIT's Women's Rowing Coach Holly Metcalf speaks with CBS Boston about the Survivors Rowing Network, a team of breast cancer survivors who are rowing in the Head of the Charles Regatta. Metcalf, who is serving as the team’s coach, says that: "I am here to cheer them on. To see the strength and the trust that comes back for people who are surviving cancer. Trust in their bodies.”
Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Associate Fred Salvucci BS '61 SM '62 speaks with GBH’s The Big Dig Podcast host Ian Coss about his role in Boston’s “Big Dig” project. “The idea for the Big Dig began with an unlikely friendship,” explains Coss. “During the highway debates in the early 70s, Fred Salvucci – one of the highway opponents – went to a ton of meetings. And across the table at many of those meetings was a man named Bill Reynolds; he was there to represent the road builders.”
Professor Karilyn Crockett speaks with GBH’s The Big Dig Podcast host Ian Coss about the impact of The “Big Dig” – Boston’s highway project – on the city, its people and urban planning. Crockett “argues that despite all the incentives to build, build, build, the costs of that building would eventually force city residents to think the unthinkable,” says Coss. “So the anti-highway fight becomes a moment of imagining possibilities,” says Crockett.
WBZ News Radio’s Emma Friedman spotlights the #IfThenSheCan Exhibit at this year’s Cambridge Science Festival, which features 30, 3-D printed orange statues of women innovators in science, technology, engineering and math, six of whom are MIT affiliates.
Boston Globe reporter Macie Parker spotlights the new John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square, the first building to open in MIT’s redevelopment of the 14-acre Volpe site that will ultimately include “research labs, retail, affordable housing, and open space, with the goal of not only encouraging innovation, but also enhancing the surrounding community.” Parker highlights the green technology included in the new Volpe Center: solar panels; triple-paned glass; electric vehicle charging stations; a rainwater reclamation and reuse system; and green and cool roof technology to lower energy use.
Prof. Jinhua Zhao writes for Boston Magazine about how artificial intelligence could help improve the MBTA system. “When something significant happens on public transportation—the line is down, the road is congested, some bridge is blocked—the customer is suddenly stuck in the system and needs more help,” writes Zhao. “For when that happens, we developed a solution to send individualized guidance for a better transit option to that person, communicated by text message or an app.”