Faculty

Victor Ambros '75, PhD '79 and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNAs, report Mark Johnson and Lizette Ortega for The Washington Post. “Ambros and Ruvkunhad worked together as postdoctoral researchers in the lab of Nobel laureate and MIT Professor Robert Horvitz. “What the microRNAs really end up revealing for us is a way that parts of our genome can communicate with other parts of the genome,” says Ambros. “The significance of this discovery of microRNAs is that it allowed us to be aware of a very complex and nuanced layer of regulation whereby genes in our cells talk to each other.”

Victor Ambros ‘75, PhD ‘79 and Gary Ruvkun have won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their groundbreaking work on how genes behave,” reports Patrick Smith for NBC News. Ambros and Ruvkun, who worked as postdocs in the lab of Professor H. Robert Horvitz in the late 1980s, discovered how microRNA molecules play a key role in gene regulation. "The pair sought to explore how nerve cells and muscle cells, for example, have very different characteristics despite having the same genetic information," writes Smith.

Prof. Jessika Trancik speaks with BBC reporter Isabelle Gerretsen about the future of electric vehicles and how shifting to EVs can help reduce carbon emissions. Trancik and her research lab developed an online tool, dubbed Carboncounter, that can analyze the climate impact of different vehicles. “A shift to an electric vehicle is one of the single most impactful decisions that someone can make if they want to reduce their own emissions," explains Trancik. 

Writing for Scientific American, MIT Prof. David Rand and University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Allen highlight new challenges in the fight against misinformation. “Combating misbelief is much more complicated—and politically and ethically fraught—than reducing the spread of explicitly false content,” they write. “But this challenge must be bested if we want to solve the ‘misinformation’ problem.”

Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with Washington Post reporters Sarah Kaplan, Shannon Osaka and Dan Stillman about the future of hurricane forecasting. “This is one thing that scares me, if these things can intensify more rapidly,” says Emanuel. “We’re going to have cases where forecasters go to bed with a tropical storm and wake up with a Category 5 when it’s too late to evacuate people.”

Prof. Regina Barzilay has received the WebMD Health Heros award for her work developing a new system that uses AI to detect breast cancer up to 5 years earlier, reports WHDH. “We do have a right to know our risk and then we, together with our healthcare providers, need to manage them,” says Barzilay. 

Writing for Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota '08 MS '16, MBA '16 explores the challenges, opportunities and future of AI-driven drug development. “I see the opportunities for AI in drug development as vast and transformative,”  writes Hayes-Mota. “AI can help potentially uncover new drug candidates that would have been impossible to find through traditional methods.”

Mayor Michelle Wu has named Prof. Kairos Shen as Boston’s new city planning chief, reports Kelly Garrity for Politico. “Shen previously served as city planner under the late Mayor Tom Menino, and touts more than two decades of experience at the Boston Redevelopment Authority on his resume,” explains Garrity. 

Mayor Michelle Wu has named Prof. Kairos Shen as Boston’s new Chief of Planning, reports Boston Herald. “I’m thrilled to welcome Kairos into leadership of Boston’s Planning Department and all the critical functions shaping the built environment for affordability, equity, and resilience,” says Wu. “As a longtime friend and advisor, Kairos brings an unparalleled knowledge and expertise of this work and our communities.”

Prof. Kairos Shen has been named Boston’s new Chief of Planning, reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe. Shen, who previously served as Boston’s top city planner for two decades, “brings tremendous design expertise and a deep understanding of Boston’s distinct neighborhoods and factions,” writes Chesto. “I love the city and I spent many years serving it,” says Shen of his appointment. “I think being able to be more reflective and having experience outside of City Hall and looking at cities all over the world, I hope I can bring [a] kind of greater wisdom that I didn’t have when I left City Hall.”

Writing for Nature, Prof. Ritu Raman explores how she drew upon her childhood experiences attending different schools across three continents to inform her teaching practices. “Although my pedagogy is still very much a work in progress, my current philosophy involves three main factors: pipettes (knowing when to put on some gloves and teach hands-on); practice (learning when to step aside and enable independent exploration); and patience (centering optimism in my view of students and science),” writes Raman. “With pipettes, practice and patience, I hope to embrace and enjoy the nonlinear nature of teaching and learning.”

Jeff Karp, an affiliate faculty member with the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, speaks with NBC Boston 10 reporter Renée Onque about the “pendulum lifestyle” – a new outlook on work-life balance detailed in Karp’s book “LIT: Life Ignition Tools.” "We hear these things from others, [like] trust in the process [and] balance is so important, we need more balance, it's the ultimate goal," says Karp. "It ends up being very frustrating and can lead to anxiety, because we're constantly feeling like we're not in balance. There's a state we should be in [and] we're never in that state."

Los Angeles Times reporter Rosanna Xia spotlights Prof. Susan Solomon’s new book, “Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again,” as a hopeful remedy to climate anxiety. “An atmospheric chemist at MIT whose research was key to healing the giant gaping hole in our ozone layer, Solomon gives us much-needed inspiration — and some tangible ways forward,” explains Xia. 

Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner spotlights Prof. Mitchel Resnick, Prof. Neil Gershenfeld, and the late Prof. Emeritus Woodie Flowers and their work developing programs that “get kids excited about, and more proficient in, STEM.” Kirsner underscores: “Each of the initiatives brings some of the hands-on problem solving, messiness, and collaborative prototyping elements of MIT’s culture into the wider world. And they’ve all had a big impact on the way kids learn about technology.”

Prof. Deborah Ancona provides advice for the new Starbucks CEO in an interview with Fast Company’s Nicole Gull McElroy. Recommending the “sensemaking” leadership strategy, she says “you need to understand the company culture, its business model, its customers…even if you have been successful at one company, there is a need to learn, or ‘sensemake,’ about your new place.”