Graduate, postdoctoral

Postdoctoral associate Wen Shuhao and postdoctoral fellows Ma Jian and Lai Lipeng co-founded Xtalpi, a biotech startup that uses “artificial intelligence to find chemical compounds that could be developed into new drugs,” reports Zinnia Lee for Forbes. “By combining AI, quantum physics, cloud computing and robotic automation, Xtalpi said it helps increase the efficiency and success rate of identifying novel drug compounds,” writes Lee. “The company has recently expanded into discovering new chemical compounds for agricultural technology, cosmetics and other applications.”

Writing for The Messenger, graduate student Kartik Chandra highlights the MIT Art Lending Program, which allows students to select one piece from the List Visual Arts Center’s collection to keep in their dorm rooms for the duration of the academic year. “Three years into my time at MIT, I’m convinced the program works well,” writes Chandra. “Our relationship with art changes from the moment we walk into the gallery. As students wander, pondering what to take home, conventional measures of fame, monetary worth, and even beauty fall away, and the only question that matters becomes: Does this piece speak to you, personally? And something always does — as if it were put there just for you.”

New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty spotlights DUSP graduate student Nick Allen MS '17 and his work advocating for Land-value taxes (LVT) in distressed US cities.

Graduate student Shayne Longpre speaks with Washington Post reporter Nitasha Tiku about the ethical and legal implications surrounding language model datasets. Longpre says “the lack of proper documentation is a community-wide problem that stems from modern machine-learning practices.”

“Brief Tender Light,” a documentary by Arthur Musah '04, MEng '05, spotlights four African-born MIT students and their experiences with adapting to the culture and challenges in and out of the classroom, reports Celina Colby for The Bay State Banner. “The story of international students, or specifically African students, in the U.S. hadn’t really been told,” says Musah. “Stats that I’ve learned more recently say there are about a million international students in any given year studying in the U.S., of which about 40,000 are African. That seems like a substantial portion of the fabric of American society.”

Arthur Musah '04, MEng '05 and graduate student Philip Abel Adama speak with WBUR host Tiziana Dearing about Musah’s documentary, “Brief Tender Light,” which follows the lives of four African-born MIT students, who “were driven to study in the U.S. and create change at home.” Musah explains, “I made this film because I felt having gone through the experience of studying in the U.S. and gone through a transformative experience, I felt that there were questions that were unanswered that I didn’t know I would have after the experience and so it was a way to go back and answer those questions or look for answers.” 

Graduate student Kaylee Cunningham speaks with CBS Boston about her work using social media to help educate and inform the public about nuclear energy. Cunningham, who is known as Ms. Nuclear Energy on TikTok, recalls how as a child she was involved in musical theater, a talent she has now combined with her research interests as an engineer. She adds that she also hopes her platform inspires more women to pursue STEM careers. “You don't have to look like the stereotypical engineer,” Cunningham emphasizes.

Graduate student Sarah Gurev and her colleagues have developed a new AI system named EVEscape that can, “predict alterations likely to occur to viruses as they evolve,” reports Erin Prater for Fortune. Gurev says that with the amount of data the system has amassed, it “can make surprisingly accurate predications.”

Arthur Musah '04, MEng '05 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Kajsa Kedefors about his new documentary, “Brief Tender Light,” which follows the lives of several African-born students from their first year at MIT through graduation and to their first jobs. Musah, “weaves in his own reflections in voice-overs throughout the film, exploring what it means to be an international African student at an elite American institution,” explains Kedefors. “He speaks to the pressure the students in the film share from back home: the idea that education is valuable and rare — that they should bring back what they learned to better the community.”

Writing for Nature, graduate student Jelle van der Hilst offers advice on determining whether the data resulting from an experiment is meaningful and useful. “Although in research it is crucial that you don’t fully trust your data until it has been triple-proven and peer-reviewed,” writes van der Hilst, “we do have to gain some operational confidence in our methods and results. Otherwise, crippled by self-doubt, we’d never bring any new research into the world.”

In a new MIT study, researchers found that people were less likely to order a menu item when it was specifically labeled as "vegan" compared to when it was not, reports Meryl Davids Landau for National Geographic. “The research is not trying to tell anyone they need to strictly transition into these diets in order to make an impact,” says graduate student Alex Berke. “This is about people eating more sustainably, more often, and what can we do to guide people towards those practices.”

In an article he co-authored for Fortune, postdoctoral associate Matthew Hughes explains how extreme heat affects different kinds of machines. “In general, the electronics contained in devices like cellphones, personal computers and data centers consist of many kinds of materials that all respond differently to temperature changes,” they write. “So as the temperature increases, different kinds of materials deform differently, potentially leading to premature wear and failure." 

Graduate student Turga Ganapathy is studying the best ways to grow spirulina at home so that the microalgae can be used as a food source, reports WCVB-TV. Spirulina “are complete proteins, meaning that they produce amino acids that the human body cannot synthesize that we usually get from animals or a combination of different plant-based proteins,” says Ganapathy.

Writing for The Washington Post, graduate student Thomas Roberts underscores the importance of investing in new technologies to mitigate the risks posed by space debris. “Space operators can control how some large objects return to Earth. But this requires extra fuel reserves and adaptive control technologies, which translate into higher costs,” writes Roberts. 

Researchers from MIT and BU have developed the Cleana toilet seat, a set of non-electric automatic lifting and lowering toilet seats that aim to make bathrooms more sanitary, reports Rob Way for WHDH.