Scientists at MIT and a private company are looking to "transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source," reports Hannah Devlin for The Guardian. Devlin quotes Prof. Maria Zuber, MIT's Vice President for Research: "At the heart of today’s news is a big idea - a credible, viable plan to achieve net positive energy for fusion.”
This year, MIT’s Global Startup Workshop (GSW), a student-run “conference on innovation and technology,” will take place in Bangkok, writes Jon Russell of TechCrunch. “We’ve been focusing more on emerging markets because it’s such an exciting space to be in and it’s a space where GSW can have the most impact,” said graduate student and organizer Juan Ruiz Ruiz.
In an article for Financial Times, CSAIL Director Daniela Rus explains why humans should collaborate rather than compete with AI. “Technology and people do not have to be in competition,” writes Rus. “Collaborating with AI systems, we can augment and amplify many aspects of work and life.”
EasyEmail, a startup co-founded at MIT, offers an AI-driven “productivity tool” for quickly responding to email. “Going through MIT’s Sandbox Program, Fuse, and The Martin Trust Center’s NYC Summer Startup Studio helped the team rapidly iterate and develop their product,” writes Forbes contributor Frederick Daso, also a graduate student at MIT.
Bloomberg View’s Barry Ritholtz interviews MIT Innovation Teams Program (i-Teams) Director Luis Perez-Breva about his love for projects that “look impossible,” ideas that are “born bad,” and what the word “innovation” really means.
Katie Rae, managing director of The Engine, has collaborated with other Boston-based female investors to create FemaleFounders.org. The group will hold “office hours” that will encourage “entrepreneurs to get to know women investors and build a community,” writes Ron Miller for TechCrunch.
MIT startup Ministry of Supply has launched an intelligent heated jacket that can operate manually or respond to smart assistants. As Richard Priday of Wired explains, the “optimum temperature of the garment” is calculated using sensors that detect the outside temperature as well as the user’s body movement and temperature.
Prof. Alex Pentland speaks with Nikolai Kuznetsov of Forbes about Endor, the predictive analytics company he cofounded with Research Affiliate Yaniv Altshuler. “Endor aspires to give average investors and traders an easier time finding equal footing all while lending the investment industry more legitimacy,” said Pentland.
Ministry of Supply, which was founded out of MIT, is launching a new line of “intelligent outerwear” that will feature a jacket that can be warmed from your smartphone. "We think technology should just blend into the background and be simple to use,” cofounder and president Gihan Amarasiriwardena ’11 told Janelle Nanos of the Boston Globe.
Reflecting on President’s Day, Prof. William Aulet speaks with Radio Boston’s Deborah Becker about what makes an effective leader. “The job of a leader is to produce results,” Aulet says. “Leadership is about creating passion, dealing with change.”
Empatica, a startup founded by Prof. Rosalind Picard, makes a wearable sensor that detects a person’s seizures, as well as certain physiological factors. Picard discussed the potential benefits of her work with Co.Design’s Katherine Schwab: “[W]hen you get personalized, long-term data from a watch or a phone, we can start to help an individual learn [their] patterns, not on average for some group you may be an outlier in.”
On WGBH’s Under The Radar, Amy Traverso, food editor at Yankee Magazine, speaks with host Callie Crossley about Spyce, the robotic kitchen developed by MIT students that will soon become an actual restaurant in Boston. “It’s going to be a fast-casual chain in Downtown Crossing and the consulting chef is Daniel Boulud,” explains Traverso.
Natasha Singer of The New York Times writes about a joint course from MIT and Harvard to teach the ethics and regulation of artificial intelligence. “As we start to see things, like autonomous vehicles, that clearly have the ability to save people but also cause harm, I think that people are scrambling to build a system of ethics,” says Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab.
Scott Kirsner of The Boston Globe outlines the three factors that have created a strong foundation for local startups that are focused on buildings. He highlights MIT’s designX accelerator program as one factor that has helped “would-be student entrepreneurs explore ideas tied to the built environment, and to potentially launch for-profit companies or nonprofit organizations.”
In an article for Fortune, writer Larissa Zimberoff highlights Wise Systems, a startup launched out of a graduate entrepreneurship class. With machine learning, Wise creates algorithms for more efficient delivery routes, which “translates into fuel savings, lower wear and tear on trucks, and, for the driver, improved earnings based on higher productivity,” writes Zimberoff.