Washington Post reporter Paige Winfield Cunningham spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new way to estimate the impact of Covid-19. The researchers “developed a way to compare and merge more than two dozen different models from universities and analytics groups around the country.”
In a new white paper, senior lecturer Steve Spear examines how the U.S. can prepare to better handle the next pandemic, reports Carey Goldberg for WBUR. Spear and his co-author are “calling for a system that would be better at amplifying pandemic lessons learned locally, to be sure the best known methods are shared and scaled up.”
In a letter to the editor that appeared in The New York Times, senior lecturer Jonathan Byrnes advocates for a continuous flow of vaccinations to quickly protect the population against Covid-19. “We need two things: 1) a core of highly experienced supply chain managers supplementing the public health professionals; and 2) a management structure, probably under the Defense Production Act, to coordinate, organize and manage the supply chain,” Byrnes writes.
Forbes contributor Sharon Goldman spotlights Prof. Yossi Sheffi’s new book, “The New (Ab)Normal,” which examines how companies shifted their operations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Goldman writes that in the book, Sheffi “details how businesses grappled with the chaos of the pandemic, and explores what enterprises are likely to do to survive and thrive in 2021 and beyond, after the pandemic starts to subside.”
Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Alan Lightman notes the importance of movie theaters and the need to ensure they survive the Covid-19 pandemic. “Although movies will undoubtedly still be made and streamed into private homes, if theaters do not survive, something irreplaceable will have been lost,” writes Lightman. “We are social creatures. No matter how comfortable our living rooms and sophisticated our technology, we need community, we need physical contact with one another.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, MIT developed a conceptual online swim class aimed at helping to keep students safe and inspiring them to learn to swim, in lieu of the traditional swim test requirement, reports Wall Street Journal reporter Jem Bartholomew. “We owe it to our students to teach them how to swim,” says Prof. Carrie Sampson Moore, director of physical education and wellness. Moore adds that she hopes that “for those who were very familiar with the activity” they’d see the benefit of conceptual learning on technique, safety or the “history of swimming.”
Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung spotlights how the development of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine demonstrates the success of the Massachusetts life sciences sector. “For more than half a century, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been the epicenter of that curiosity, with a focus on molecular biology — initially to find a cure for cancer,” writes Leung. “There have been Nobel laureates collaborating on cancer, genetics, and immunology, along with future laureates making discoveries in how RNA, a molecule that is as fundamental as DNA to cell function, can be used in medicine.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Ramesh Raskar underscores the importance of ensuring that every American has the opportunity to receive the Covid-19 vaccine without cost or without giving up their privacy. “By effectively communicating the privacy benefits of decentralized data collection and anonymized data reporting, mobile apps might diminish barriers to vaccination that exist due to privacy concerns,” writes Raskar.
Vice President for Open Leaning Sanjay Sarma speaks with Jeffrey Young of EdSurge about how the brain works when understanding new concepts. "I question a lot of the structures and dogmas in education that are very closely held, but not necessarily based on science,” says Sarma. “And if we have the courage to reexamine these assumptions and reconstitute education, there's an incredible opportunity to change the game.”
A national survey led by Prof. Charles Stewart III found that Americans generally had smooth experiences voting in the 2020 presidential election, reports Alexa Corse for The Wall Street Journal. Stewart explains that he thinks many voters will continue voting by mail in the future. “I think there will be less reeling back than the rhetoric is suggesting right now,” says Stewart. “State legislatures are going to discover that a lot of the security questions they have are based on exaggerated claims.”
Axios reporter Bryan Walsh spotlights a new study by researchers from MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future that examines the impact of AI on the future of work. Walsh notes that the report’s authors “recommend programs that can enhance computer skills from kindergarten through the university level, while urging businesses and worker organizations to build cushions for the sometimes harsh changes AI will wreak on work.”
Noubar Afeyan ’87, a member of the MIT Corporation, speaks with NPR’s Joel Rose about the importance of immigrants and the role of immigration in major scientific advances, including the development of two Covid-19 vaccines. "I think of innovation as a form of intellectual immigration," Afeyan said. "You leave your comforts behind you. You face unrecognizable challenges. You take nothing for granted. You don't feel like in your new country people owe you anything."
New York Times reporter David Leonhardt spotlights Prof. Jonathan Gruber and Prof. Simon Johnson’s book, “Jump-Starting America,” which explores how collaboration between the federal government and private companies has led to some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs.
Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with Wall Street Journal reporters Sarah Krouse, Jared S. Hopkins and Ana Wilde Mathews about the challenges posed by distributing the Covid-19 vaccine across the country. “Everything has to come together—the packaging, the dry ice, the vials, the material itself. It all has to come together to the same place and have enough of it and exactly the right people there ready to take it,” says Sheffi. “Right now, there’s no conductor to the symphony,” just many parts that each need to work.
Research scientist Matthias Winkenbach discusses the difficulties posed by massively scaling up capacity to deal with a surge in online shopping caused by the holidays and the Covid-19 pandemic. “I think especially this time of the year and under these circumstances, maybe also the consumers need to reconsider whether everything they order on Amazon or elsewhere needs to be delivered as fast as possible,” says Winkenbach, “or whether there’s certain things to prioritize and other things to deprioritize.”