Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18 founded Bloomer Tech, a health tech startup that aims to improve health care diagnostics for women using medical-grade data to develop new therapies and care models, reports Carol Eisenberg for The Washington Post. Rodriguez and her colleagues "developed, patented and tested flexible washable circuits to turn articles of clothing into devices that can relay reams of information to the wearer’s smartphone,” writes Eisenberg.
Prof. Héctor Beltrán speaks with Lily Jamali of Marketplace about his new book, “Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands,” which explores the culture of hackathons and entrepreneurship in Mexico. "Ultimately, it’s about difference, thinking about Silicon Valley from Mexico,” says Beltrán. "Also, from a Chicano/Latino perspective, because as I show throughout the book, there’s these connections, tensions, intersections between the Latino community in the U.S., the Latin American community, the Mexican community.”
Fast Company reporter Amelia Hemphill spotlights the work of Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18, and her startup Bloomer Tech, which is “dedicated to transforming women’s underwear into a healthcare device.” “Our big goal is to generate digital biomarkers,” says Chong Rodriguez. “Digital biomarkers work more like a video, so it will definitely allow a more personalized care from the physician to their patient.”
Prof. Sarah Williams speaks with Erin Langer at Metropolis about the Civic Data Design Lab’s Motivational Tapestry, a large woven art piece that uses data from the United Nations World Food Program to visually represent the individual motivations of 1,624 Central Americans who have migrated to the U.S. “By allowing a dialogue to open up and be less defensive, art allows us to understand and conceptualize an issue from a different vantage point,” explains Williams.
Forbes reporter Marija Butkovic spotlights Alicia Chong Rodriguez MS ’18, Founder and CEO of Bloomer Tech, for her work in building a cardiovascular disease and stroke database that can generate non-invasive digital biomarkers. “We envision a world where the future of AI in healthcare performs the best it can in women,” says Chong Rodriguez. “We also have created a digital biomarker pipeline where our digital biomarkers can explain, influence, and even improve health outcomes for women.”
Lecturer Mikael Jakobsson, Rosa Colón Guerra (a resident at MIT’s Visiting Artists program), and graduate student Aziria Rodríguez Arce have created a new board game, called Promesa, that more accurately reflects the reality of Puerto Rico’s history and people, reports Maria Parazo Rose for Popular Science. “The game is based on the real-life PROMESA act, which was established by the US government in 2016 in response to the island’s debt crisis, putting American lawmakers in charge of the country’s finances,” explains Rose. “To win, you must settle Puerto Rico’s bills and build up the country’s infrastructure, education, and social services.”
NPR’s Ted Radio Hour spotlights the work of Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18, who is trying to address the gaps that exist in women’s health data through a smart bra that can be used to acquire physiological data. Chong’s startup BloomerTech has “built medical-grade textile sensors that can adapt to multiple bra styles and sizes for continuous, reliable and repeatable data all around her torso and her heart.”
A new report by researchers from MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab, the Migration Policy Institute and the World Food Programme investigates the motivations and costs of migration from Central America, and finds that migrants spend $2.2 billion every year trying to reach the U.S., reports Catherine E. Shoichet for CNN. "That is an extreme amount of money," explains Prof. Sarah Williams. "That $2.2 billion is all paid for by the migrants themselves, so the risks, both in terms of debt and personal risk, is borne by the migrant."
Prof. Jaime Peraire, head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, spoke with Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos about how to encourage more Latinos to study science, technology, engineering and math as part of Univision’s Education Week coverage. (This interview is in Spanish.)
John Tirman, executive director of the MIT Center for International Studies, writes for WBUR about opposition within the Republican party to immigration reform. “Opposition to immigration reform is one of the more perplexing symptoms of Washington paralysis nowadays,” says Tirman.
In an article for The Huffington Post, John Tirman argues that the wave of migration from African and Latin American countries is a crisis caused partially by economic and political policies that American and European leaders have played a role in shaping. “Until the first world policies change, the third world will keep coming, at all costs,” Tirman writes.