Graduate student John Urschel visits the Today Show to discuss his new book and what inspired him to pursue a PhD in mathematics. Urschel explains that his mother tried to ensure that “whatever I wanted to be the only thing that would limit me was a lack of talent, bad luck, lack of hard work, but it wasn’t going to be the household I was born into or a lack of resources.”
Research assistant Blakeley Payne speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Michelle Ma about her work developing a curriculum that teaches kids about the ethics of AI. “You have to integrate the ethics piece at every point, because you never want to fall into the trap of presenting an AI system as like a mathematical equation,” explains Payne, “with the authority of a mathematical equation.”
Members of the MIT Spokes team speak with NBC Boston reporter Michael Page about their quest to ride their bicycles across the country this summer, hosting STEM workshops for students along the way. Undergraduate Leah Yost explains that the hands-on workshops provide students with a sense of “what a future in STEM might look like.”
Writing for Wired, Prof. Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, argues that online platforms should be designed to encourage young people to learn and explore through high-quality content. “We need to recognize that young people will make contact with commercial content and grown-ups online, and we need to figure out better ways to regulate and optimize platforms to serve participants of mixed ages,” writes Ito.
Reporting for WBUR’s CommonHealth, Carey Goldberg highlights new classroom kits developed by MIT researchers that allow kids to learn and experiment with the building blocks of DNA. "I just think it's really important that microbiology education is accessible for everyone," says graduate student Ally Huang, "and that everyone, regardless of their resources, has access to things like this."
The Clubhouse Network, which the MIT Media Lab helped launch 25 years ago, has opened its flagship headquarters in Dudley Square, reports Allison Hagan for The Boston Globe. Now in 100 cities in the U.S. and other countries, the program helps “young people to use technology for creative self-expression and collaborate with their peers and mentors,” explains Hagan.
Fox News reporters Kevin Tracy and Christopher Howard highlight how MIT alumna Laila Shabir created a summer camp aimed at inspiring girls interesting in playing and creating video games. “It’s like teaching someone how to paint,” Shabir explains. “You know once you teach them how to paint they can express themselves through that medium. That’s exactly what we’re doing at camp.”
WCVB’s Mike Wankum visits the Beaver Works Summer Institute to see how high school students are gaining hands-on engineering experience. Robert Shin, director of Beaver Works, explains that the program is aimed at “inspiring the next generation.”
MIT was named the number one STEM school in the country on Forbes’ 2018 list of the top 25 STEM colleges, reports Carter Coudriet for Forbes. Coudriet notes that, “MIT’s high ranking is driven by its grads’ career success.”
WCVB-TV’s Karen Holmes Ward highlights how MIT students created a summer camp, called DynaMIT, aimed at getting middle school students interested in STEM fields. MIT undergraduate Julia Cho explains that DynaMIT tries to, “focus on hands-on activities because we know that students are much more interested in those sorts of experiments and places where they can explore to their heart’s content.”
In a VICE News Tonight climate segment, MIT postdocs Volodymyr Koman and Seon-Yeong Kwak explain their technique for making plants glow in the dark to a first-grade class in Boston. Following a demonstration mixing plant glucose with the specialized nanoparticles, one student exclaims in disbelief, “no battery or anything!”
In an article for The Week, John Holden speaks with Prof. Kripa Varanasi about what inspired him to pursue a career science. Varanasi recalls how his mother, “was instrumental in driving my ambitions. She used to buy me amazing electronics kits when I was a kid.”
Science reporter Philip Shapira highlights Prof. Neil Gershenfeld’s new book, co-written with his brothers, about digital fabrication. Shapira writes that the, “Gershenfelds engagingly alert us not only to the opportunities that digital fabrication presents but also to the societal and governance challenges that the widespread diffusion of this technology will generate.”
STAT reporter Hyacinth Empinado highlights Media Lab Research Scientist David Kong’s new project Biota Beats, which uses bacterial data as the basis for hip-hop melodies. “Music is one of the great universal languages of our human society. We thought this would be a really, really wonderful way to engage the broader public and get them excited about science through music,” said Kong.
WHDH speaks with MIT staff member Maia Weinstock, who designed the original concept for the Women of NASA LEGO set. Weinstock explained that she is “really excited to see teachers and parents and kids tell me their stories of how they are going to use the set.”