Prof. Erin Kara speaks with Harry Smith of NBC News about the data sonification of the black hole at the center of the Perseus Galaxy. Kara notes that data sonification is “a really exciting way to hear the universe and think about it in a new way.”
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Forbes contributor Peter Cohan about the carbon emissions associated with gas, hybrid and electric vehicles, and the site she and her research group developed to allow consumers to compare personal vehicles against climate change mitigation targets. “In most locations, compared to [gas-powered vehicles], EVs produce emissions savings greater than 30%,” says Trancik. "Most savings are greater depending on the geographic location, the electricity supply, and the vehicle model.”
Researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School have created an artificial intelligence program that can accurately identify a patient’s race based off medical images, reports Tony Ho Tran for The Daily Beast. “The reason we decided to release this paper is to draw attention to the importance of evaluating, auditing, and regulating medical AI,” explains Principal Research Scientist Leo Anthony Celi.
TechCrunch reporter Kyle Wiggers spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new computer vision algorithm that can identify images down to the individual pixel. The new algorithm is a “vast improvement over the conventional method of ‘teaching’ an algorithm to spot and classify objects in pictures and videos,” writes Wiggers.
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with ABC News about the urgent need to transition to renewable energy sources, and how we can build a future powered by alternative energy. “Up until recently there were really significant questions about whether we could transition to another [energy] foundation,” says Trancik. “This question has now been answered in that we now have cost competitive renewable primary energy in the form of solar and wind energy and also in other types of renewable energy.”
STAT reporter Katie Palmer spotlights Principal Research Scientist Leo Anthony Celi’s research underscoring the importance of improving the diversity of datasets used to design and test clinical AI systems. “The biggest concern now is that the algorithms that we’re building are only going to benefit the population that’s contributing to the dataset,” says Celi. “And none of that will have any value to those who carry the biggest burden of disease in this country, or in the world.”
MIT startup ReadySet, co-founded by Alana Marzoev PhD ’18 and Jon Gjengset PhD ’20, provides database infrastructure to help developers build real-time applications, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. “Rather than rebuilding these same broken systems, developers need solutions that slot into their existing infrastructure and achieve limitless read scaling,” says Marzoev. “With ReadySet, we aim to make the process of globally caching… query results as streamlined and automated as caching images in a content delivery system.”
MIT researchers and two high school seniors have developed DualFair, a new technique for removing bias from a mortgage lending dataset, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “When a mortgage-lending AI was trained using DualFair and tested on real-world mortgage data from seven US states,” writes Bray, “the system was less likely to reject applications of otherwise qualified borrowers because of their race, sex, or ethnicity.”
Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Nidhi Subbaraman about the dramatic drops in costs to manufacture and sell renewable technologies. Subbaraman notes that Trancik’s research shows that “the steep drop in solar and lithium-ion battery technology was enabled by market expansion policies as well as investment in research and development by governments and the private sector.”
Boston Globe reporter Michael Silverman spotlights the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which is highlighting the resiliency of the sports industry.
Forbes contributor Patrick Rishe spotlights the 2022 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which addressed equity analytics, the Rooney rule, sports marketing in the metaverse, and the future of AI in sports. “Advancements in technology and tracking granular layers of fan behavior at (and away from) sports venues are giving brands deeper insights on connecting a particular partnership with real consumer purchase intentions,” writes Rishe.
Axios reporter Erin Broadwin spotlights Dimagi, a digital tool for health workers in remote areas that was started by researchers from the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program.
Sajith Wickramasekara ‘15 and Ashu Singhal ’11 co-founded Benchling, a software company designed to make it easier to keep track of laboratory data. The company has now acquired Overwatch, a software company for customers working in preclinical biopharma research, reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. “It [the acquisition] fits really nicely in the direction our company is heading,” says Wickramasekara. “It really helps us extend our offering, especially for biopharma where we’re growing a lot.”
Recent MIT research has found a high number of errors in public datasets often used for training models, reports David Talby for Forbes. “An average of 3.3% errors were found in the test sets of 10 of the most widely used computer vision, natural language processing (NLP) and audio datasets,” writes Talby.
Forbes contributor Carolina Milanesi spotlights Dr. Ana Pinheiro Privette ’98, the global lead for the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), who collaborates with environmental nonprofits, private companies and government agencies to give researchers access to ASDI’s data catalog information. “I’m not sure if I am saving the world, but I’m at least helping people have more resources to do it,” says Pinheiro Privette.