To celebrate the list of known exoplanets topping 5,000, New York Times reporter Becky Ferreira spoke with astronomers, actors and astronauts about their favorite exoplanets or exoplanetary systems. “TOI-1233 is an outstanding planetary system with its high number of transiting planets, sunlike host star and its proximity to the solar system,” says postdoc Tansu Daylan of the system he detected along with two high school students he was mentoring.
Prof. Jesús del Alamo speaks with Bloomberg Radio’s Janet Wu about a new report by MIT researchers that explores how the U.S. can regain leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and production. “Leadership in microelectronics is really critical for economic progress and also security concerns,” says del Alamo.
TESS, a NASA mission led and operated by MIT, has discovered over 5,000 planets candidates outside of our solar system, reports Ed Browne for Newsweek. “This time last year, TESS had found just over 2,400 TOIs (TESS Objects of Interest),” says postdoctoral associate Michelle Kunimoto. “Today, TESS has reached more than twice that number – a huge testament to the mission and all the teams scouring the data for new planets.”
A new white paper by MIT researchers underscores the importance of regaining the U.S.’s innovation leadership in the area of semiconductor manufacturing and calls for increased investment at the research level to help advance this field, reports Stephen Shankland for CNET. "The hollowing out of semiconductor manufacturing in the US is compromising our ability to innovate in this space and puts at risk our command of the next technological revolution,” write the report’s authors. “To ensure long-term leadership, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing in the US must be prioritized and universities activities have to get closer to it."
Boston Globe reporter Christopher Muther writes that technology developed by researchers from MIT’s Lincoln Lab “uses three-dimensional radar imaging and artificial intelligence to not only scan for metal, but objects such as plastic explosives, liquid explosives, ghost guns, and other weapons that a metal detector can’t pick up.” The technology could be deployed in airports and cruise terminals, Muther explains.
The MIT Haystack Observatory honored the work of Herbert Weiss, a trailblazing engineer and former researcher at MIT Lincoln Lab who helped establish Haystack, which operates a radio telescope whose work “is the stuff of scientific legend,” writes Thomas Farragher for The Boston Globe. “This place wouldn’t exist if he had not had the leadership and the vision and the drive to make it happen,” says Colin J. Lonsdale, director of Haystack.
Forbes contributor Greg Gardner highlights GPR, an MIT startup developing ground positioning radar for autonomous vehicles. “Ground-penetrating radar can map the road structure beneath a vehicle. That sub-structure is unique and stable, much like a fingerprint,” writes Gardner. “So it can enable vehicles to find their position, no matter how remote, reliably and accurately regardless of the road conditions or visibility of road markings above ground.”
Postdoc Tansu Daylan speaks with CNN reporter Ada Wood about his work mentoring two high school students, and their discovery of four new exoplanets. "When it comes to studying by comparison — that is, studying the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system around sun-like stars — this is probably one of the best targets that we will ever get," says Daylan.
Two high school students and their mentor, MIT postdoc Tansu Daylan, have discovered four new exoplanets located about 200 light years from Earth, reports Nora McGreevy for Smithsonian. The students were participating in the Student Research Mentoring Program, which pairs young astronomers with scientists at MIT and Harvard. “[The students] are so good at finding things that may skip your eyes, basically. It’s fun. And I really like the exchange of ideas,” Daylan adds.
Mashable spotlights how two high school students, who were part of Student Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and MIT, have discovered four new exoplanets. “Both the students took guidance from mentor Tansu Daylan, a postdoc at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and helped the students study and analyze data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).”
Marc Zissman, associate division head at Lincoln Lab, speaks with New York Times reporter Jennifer Valentino-DeVries about the challenges associated with encouraging people to use coronavirus tracing apps.
Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory have developed a new quantum chip with integrated photonics, a “vital step to advance the evolution of trapped-ion quantum computers and quantum sensors,” reports Paul Smith-Goodson for Forbes.
Washington Post reporter Rachel Lerman highlights how MIT researchers developed a robotic system that uses UV light to disinfect spaces. “By knowing the geometry of the space — usually represented as a map — the robot can compute a patrolling trajectory and speed to expose all surfaces to the dosage that neutralizes the pathogens,” explains Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL.
Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia and senior postdoctoral associate Leslie Chan discuss their work developing a synthetic biosensor to diagnose lung disease. Chan explains that “instead of relying on naturally occurring breath volatiles, we wanted to be able to engineer the breath signal that we could use to monitor lung disease.”
CNN reporter Allen Kim writes about how CSAIL researchers developed a new system that enables a robot to disinfect surfaces and neutralize aerosolized forms of the coronavirus. In the future, the researchers hope the robot could be used to enable autonomous UV disinfection “in other environments such as supermarkets, factories and restaurants.”