Writing for Fortune, graduate student Jenny Blessing and alumni McCoy Patiño, Tran Nguyen, and Julian Gomez explore how providing tracking options for mail-in ballots could help mitigate the risks of mailing delays. “Mail tracking capability increases accountability of the USPS and boosts public confidence in voting by mail,” they write.
In an article for The Conversation, graduate student Silvia Danielak delves into her new research exploring why disaster management models often need to be adjusted to better serve the needs of different communities. “Paying attention to the urban disaster managers’ understanding of place-based risk sheds light on the continuously compounding vulnerability and lack of sustainable disaster risk reduction in communities at risk,” Danielak writes.
Graduate student Kenyatta McLean speaks with Fast Company reporter Nate Berg about BlackSpace, a non-profit she co-founded that aims to bring communities of color into the urban planning decision-making process. “We know that heritage is such an important part of Black neighborhoods and is something that Black neighborhoods continue to produce and conserve themselves, so we did want to amplify that work,” says McLean.
Michael Hecht of MIT’s Haystack Observatory speaks with Perry Russom of NECN about MOXIE, a new experimental device that will convert carbon dioxide in the Marian atmosphere into oxygen. Hecht explains that the inspiration for MOXIE lies in how it would be easier, “if we could make that oxygen on Mars and not have to bring this huge honking oxygen tank with us all the way from Earth.”
Prof. Tanja Bosak speaks with Vox reporter Brian Resnick about how Martian materials collected by the Perseverance rover might provide clues about early life forms on Earth. "These [Martian] rocks are older, by half a billion or a billion years, than anything that’s well preserved that we have on Earth,” says Bosak.
Boston Globe reporter Caroline Enos spotlights the contributions of MIT researchers to the Mars 2020 mission, in particular the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or MOXIE. “MOXIE could have a big impact on future missions if it is successful,” Enos explains.
Haystack’s Michael Hecht, the principal investigator for the Mars MOXIE experiment, speaks with Max G. Levy of Smithsonian about the challenges involved in developing MOXIE’s oxygen-producing technology. “We want to show we can run [MOXIE] in the daytime, and the nighttime, in the winter, and in the summer, and when it’s dusty out," says Hecht, "in all of the different environments."
Writing for the Financial Times about financial training, Jonathan Moules spotlights the Sloan School of Management’s 18-month Master of Finance degree program. “This allows students an extra term to take additional courses and gain additional practical experience with a summer internship,” explains Heidi Pickett, assistant dean for the Master of Finance program.
Daily Beast reporter David Axe spotlights graduate student Guillermo Bernal’s work developing virtual reality avatars that can convey realistic human emotions. “As this medium moves forward, this and other tools are what will help the field of virtual reality expand from a medium of surface-level experience to one of deep, emotionally compelling human-to-human connection,” Bernal explains.
Graduate student Michael Freedman writes for The Washington Post about how growing religious polarization in Israel contributes to an unstable political environment. “Growing polarization in Israel may lead to electoral instability as it becomes harder to make political coalitions in Israel,” posits Freedman.
Boston Globe reporter Alison Kuznitz writes that during MIT’s Commencement, former mayor Michael Bloomberg detailed plans for a new initiative aimed at tackling climate change. “This has gone from a scientific challenge to a political problem,” said Bloomberg, “and it’s time for everyone to recognize that climate change is the challenge of our time.”
Boston Business Journal reporter Hilary Burns spotlights the diligent preparation that goes into the reading of graduates’ names and ensuring that MIT’s Commencement ceremony runs smoothly. “We practice. It can be too slow or too fast,” explains Sarah Gallop, one of eight readers. “There is a magic sweet spot in the pace.”
A new book by graduate student John Urschel chronicles his decision to retire from the NFL and pursue his passion for mathematics at MIT, reports the Associated Press. Urschel explains that through his book, he “wanted to share my love of math and also perhaps train certain peoples’ thinking about math and show them some of the beauty, elegance and importance of mathematics.”
In an article for Gizmodo, Dell Cameron writes that graduate student Joy Buolamwini testified before Congress about the inherent biases of facial recognition systems. Buolamwini’s research on face recognition tools “identified a 35-percent error rate for photos of darker skinned women, as opposed to database searches using photos of white men, which proved accurate 99 percent of the time.”
Wired reporter Lily Hay Newman highlights graduate student Joy Buolamwini’s Congressional testimony about the bias of facial recognition systems. “New research is showing bias in the use of facial analysis technology for health care purposes, and facial recognition is being sold to schools,” said Buolamwini. “Our faces may well be the final frontier of privacy.”