Prof. Tavneet Suri speaks with NPR reporter Nurith Aizenman about her ongoing research studying the impact of universal basic income with GiveDirectly, a U.S. charity that provides villagers in Kenya with a universal basic income. Suri says her results thus far, “add to the evidence that many poor people are trapped in poverty by a lack of capital for precisely the kinds of transformative investments they would need to vault them into higher incomes.”
Prof. Tavneet Suri speaks with NPR hosts Ari Shapiro and Nurith Aizenman about her research with GiveDirectly a U.S. based charity that provides villages in Kenya with universal basic income. Suri’s work studies how the method of income delivery payments – monthly income or single lump sum payments – can impact communities. “We need to see if these effects last,” says Suri. “Does it just disappear, or was this enough to keep them going forever?”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Mitchel Resnick explores how a new coding app developed by researchers from the Lifelong Kindergarten group is aimed at allowing young people to use mobile phones to create interactive stories, games and animations. Resnick makes the case that with “appropriate apps and support, mobile phones can provide opportunities for young people to imagine, create, and share projects.”
Prof. Hari Balakrishnan has been selected as the recipient of the Marconi Prize for “fundamental discoveries in wired and wireless networking, mobile sensing, and distributed systems,” reports the Press Trust of India. “The Marconi Prize is awarded annually by The Marconi Society to innovators who have significantly contributed to increasing digital inclusivity through advanced information and communications technology.”
Popular Science reporter Andrew Paul writes that MIT engineers have developed a new chip for smart phones that blocks unwanted signals, which could “greatly reduce production costs, make devices smaller and more efficient, and potentially even improve battery life.” Graduate student Soroush Araei explains that “our research can make your devices work better with fewer dropped calls or poor connections caused by interference from other devices.”
Wired reporter Matt Simon spotlights a study by researchers from MIT and other institutions that finds smartphones in cars could be used to track the structural integrity of bridges. The findings “could pave the way (sorry) for a future in which thousands of phones going back and forth across a bridge could collectively measure the span’s health, alerting inspectors to problems before they’re visible to the human eye,” writes Simon.
Prof. Hari Balakrishnan speaks with Forbes contributor Stuart Anderson about his decision to leave India to pursue a PhD in computer science in the U.S., his love for teaching students as a professor at MIT and his work co-founding Cambridge Mobile Telematics, a software company that utilizes technology to make roads safer. “Immigration and immigrants make the United States stronger,” said Balakrishnan. “Immigration is the biggest strength that we have. We need to be able to attract and retain talent, no matter where people come from.”
Indian Express reporter Sethu Pradeep writes that MIT researchers have developed a low-energy security chip designed to prevent side channel attacks on smart devices. “It can be used in any sensor nodes which connects user data,” explains graduate student Saurav Maji. “For example, it can be used in monitoring sensors in the oil and gas industry, it can be used in self-driving cars, in fingerprint matching devices and many other applications.”
Prof. Muriel Médard speaks with WCAI’s Living Lab Radio about the potential impact of 5G technologies on a number of industries. “If one can count on reliable services that allow remote operation of certain aspects of our work lives,” Médard explains, “that's where you change the way people work quite a bit.”
MIT researchers have identified a new method to engineer neural networks in a way that allows them to be a tenth of the size of current networks without losing any computational ability, reports Avery Thompson for Popular Mechanics. “The breakthrough could allow other researchers to build AI that are smaller, faster, and just as smart as those that exist today,” Thompson explains.
Technology Review reporter Will Knight spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new chip that is many times more efficient than silicon chips and could help bring AI to a multitude of devices where power is limited. “We need new hardware because Moore’s law has slowed down,” explains Prof. Vivienne Sze.
Forbes reporter Jessica Baron writes that MIT researchers have developed a platform that “addresses the key issue in cloud computing, which is that the data (or “breadcrumbs”) we leave behind online when we search the web, sign up for subscriptions, use social media, make purchases, etc. is stored on remote data servers where the information is then combined and sold to advertisers.”
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes that MIT startup Altaeros has developed a helium-filled airship called a SuperTower that can be used to carry cellular antennas and can be tethered 800 feet above ground. Bray explains that radio signals from the SuperTower “have a range of more than 35 miles over flat terrain, taking the place of 15 land-based cell towers.”
Reporting for Scientific American’s “60-Second Science” podcast, Christopher Intagliata explores how MIT developed a device, called a rectenna, that can capture energy from Wi-Fi signals and convert them into electricity. The scientists “envision a smart city where buildings, bridges and highways are studded with tiny sensors to monitor their structural health, each sensor with its own rectenna,” Intagliata explains.
Scientific American reporter Jeff Hecht writes that MIT researchers developed a new flexible material that can harvest energy from wireless signals. “The future of electronics is bringing intelligence to every single object from our clothes to our desks and to our infrastructure,” explains Prof. Tomás Palacios.