A team of MIT students took first place in the first round of the SpaceX Hyperloop competition, reports Steve Annear for The Boston Globe. Team members told Annear that, “It’s great to see our hard work recognized, and we are excited to have the opportunity to continue to push this technology one step closer to reality.”
MIT will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Institute’s move from Boston to Cambridge this May, reports Kristin Toussaint for Boston.com. Toussaint writes that MIT is hosting a "competition in which MIT alumni, students, staff, and faculty can create vessels that will make their own voyage across river."
Eleanor Goldberg writes for The Huffington Post that a team of MIT researchers has developed a solar-powered desalination system that could help bring clean drinking water to rural areas. The researchers hope to eventually release a model that could provide clean drinking water for an entire village, Goldberg reports.
Team Raptor Maps received the top prize in MIT’s annual $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. Founded by three MIT students, Raptor Maps “proposes to use camera-carrying drones to survey farmland and pinpoint damage before pests and diseases can decimate crops.”
OptiBit, a startup that aims to make data centers more energy efficient, won this year’s MIT Clean Energy Prize, reports Vijee Venkatraman for BetaBoston. The OptiBit team explains that their technology offers “10 times more throughput, two times lower latency, and 95 percent less energy use” compared to copper-based chips.
BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman writes about the history of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which marks its 25th anniversary this year. Subbaraman writes that the competition “pioneered the college pitch contest, a style that now dominates the startup landscape.”
Sarah Shemkus writes for The Boston Globe about how the MIT Climate CoLab uses crowdsourcing to address climate change. Climate change “is not a problem where one person or one organization can solve the problem alone,” says Prof. Thomas Malone, founder and head of the Climate CoLab.
Eden Shulman reports for BetaBoston on this year’s 2.007 robot competition. Students participating in this year’s challenge competed on a course inspired by the movie Back to the Future and had to create robots capable of opening a replica DeLorean’s door, throwing bananas into a fusion energy reaction and climbing the famous clock tower from the movie.
A team of MIT researchers won the grand prize in a competition that challenged participants to develop sustainable desalination technologies, reports Jeff Daniels reports for NBC News. The MIT researchers designed a solar-powered "electrodialysis reversal system that desalinates water using electricity.”
In an article for Popular Science, Mary Beth Griggs reports that a team of MIT researchers won the Desal Prize, a competition judging the effectiveness of new desalination systems. The MIT team developed a system that uses solar panels to power “a system that removes salt from the water through electrodialysis.”
In a piece for Scientific American, Amanda Baker writes about the MIT Science Olympiad Invitational Tournament, which brought together more than 60 teams of high school students from 14 states. The event was organized by a group of MIT undergraduates dedicated to improving the experience of science competitions for high school students.
Students in course 2.009 not only learn about the process of creating new products, but also how to pitch their invention, writes Boston Globe reporter Stefanie Friedhoff. According to Prof. David Wallace, the course covers “how you make a product in the real world, with engineers and designers and business people all working together.”
Matt Lee writes for The Boston Globe about the cybersecurity contest between stduents from MIT and University of Cambridge to devise better cybersecurity technologies and platforms. The competition will allow students an opportunity to tackle real-world cybersecurity challenges, Lee explains
Students from MIT and the University of Cambridge will compete in a cybersecurity competition called “Cambridge v Cambridge” this fall, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. “Each team will race as they seek access to coded secrets, while earning points for offensive and defensive strategies,” writes Subbaraman.
Steve Annear writes for Boston Magazine about a cybersecurity contest between students from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the University of Cambridge. “The competition is part of the two allied nations’ efforts to team up and improve the cyber security infrastructure worldwide, and better respond to cyber incidents and threats,” writes Annear.