School of Architecture and Planning

A study by MIT and Harvard researchers has found that sleep onset, the transitional period from a woozy but still awake state into sleep, has a strong effect on creativity, reports Alan Mozes for HealthDay.

Science reporter Sofia Moutinho spotlights how MIT researchers used a glove that tracks sleep stages to guide people’s dreams while they snoozed. Many participants who considered themselves “stuck and uncreative” were surprised at how inventive they could be in their dreams, explains postdoc Adam Haar Horowitz. “Most people don’t know that there’s a piece of themselves that is biologically designed to be totally unstuck, but they’re forgetting it every night.”

Prof. Carlo Ratti speaks with CNN reporter Paula Newton about the future of cities and the potential impact of vacant office spaces. “We need to meet in a physical space,” says Ratti. “Maybe not in the old office tower, but the physical space is very important. It’s the way we sustain and enrich our social networks.”   

Eleven fellows have been selected for the 2023-2024 Morningside Academy for Design (MIT MAD) program, reports Designboom, which is focused on offering “opportunities for students, faculty, and the general public to explore the intersection of design, technology, and social impact.” The fellowship program is aimed at helping designers have a “real-world impact in fields such as sustainability, architecture, health, and social justice.”

Prof. Cynthia Breazeal, the MIT dean of digital learning, speaks with Education Week reporter Alyson Klein about the importance of ensuring K-12 students are AI literate. “The AI genie is out of the bottle,” says Breazeal. “It’s not just in the realm of computer science and coding. It is affecting all aspects of society. It’s the machine under everything. It’s critical for all students to have AI literacy if they are going to be using computers, or really, almost any type of technology.”

MIT researchers have found that interactions between people from different economic backgrounds have dropped significantly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, reports David Scharfenberg for The Boston Globe. Scharfenberg notes the “the phenomenon could hurt low-income people in direct ways – they’ll lose connections to better-off people – and indirect ways.”

Boston Globe reporter Yvonne Abraham spotlights Postdoctoral Fellow Lydia Harrington and Boston University Postdoctoral Associate Chloe Bordewich and their work examining the history of Boston’s former Little Syria neighborhood. “It’s important that Bostonians think about this as part of their history,” says Bordewich. “But we also wanted to contribute something so that recent Syrian arrivals can engage and see part of their history, too.”

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, writes for Forbes about how a person’s zip code can impact their retirement planning. “Most of us think where we’ll live in retirement is answered by where we live now,” writes Coughlin. “That is, we choose to age in place and stay put. However, as we age, our needs, desires, health conditions, social connections, and more will change. This can often create a disconnect between what works now and what will work later on.”

Writing for MarketWatch, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, discusses the importance of ensuring that retirees have access to quality healthcare. “Given demographic shifts in the medical profession as well as healthcare-industry restructuring, understanding where, and from whom, you will be accessing quality personal care that fits your unique health conditions, just when you most need it most, must now be part of an overall longevity plan that extends well beyond money,” writes Coughlin.

Prof. Carlo Ratti speaks with CNN reporter Sarah Engel about smart cities and the future of AI infrastructure. Ratti says the key to avoiding pitfalls is to keep citizens engaged: “They should be the ones to decide what kind of city they want to live in tomorrow.”

IEEE Pulse reporter Leslie Mertz spotlights Prof. Ed Boyden’s work on refining expansion microscopy. “My hope for expansion, looking 5 or 10 years out, is that it could help produce a map of molecules that is detailed enough to help us understand life itself,” says Boyden.

Adjunct Professor Emeritus Melvin “Mel” King, a political activist, former MA state representative and the first Black person to reach a Boston mayoral general election, has died at 94. “[In 1971], he founded the Community Fellows Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became an adjunct professor of urban studies and planning. The program brings leaders from minority communities to MIT for a year of research and study,” writes Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. 

MIT has ranked first in 11 different academic fields in the latest QS World University Rankings, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.

MIT researchers have developed a low-cost air quality sensor that can be 3-D printed using open-source instructions and used by people around the world, reports Kristin Toussaint for Fast Company. “The reason we started this project was because we wanted to democratize environmental data,” explains research scientist Simone Mora. “We’re not just opening the data we’ve collected so far, but we hope to funnel a huge development in terms of sensors deployed in the streets, and in turn [make] the data collected available to everyone.”

Prof. Nicholas de Monchaux speaks with New York Times reporter Vanessa Friedman about NASA’s newest spacesuit. The suit is “the costume for the drama we project into space,” says Monchaux. “[The way we] put ourselves into the heavens.”