Gigi Levy Weiss writes for Forbes about the importance of social change in tech education. Highlighting MEET (Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow), an MIT-supported non-profit that connects and empowers Palestinian and Israeli students, Weiss notes that alumni of the program “have gone on to study, work and lead in the global tech industry, as well as in NGOs and government roles.”
Researchers have developed a handheld device, inspired by spiders, to allow people to move in zero-gravity, writes Daniel Oberhaus for Motherboard. “I want to be able to move freely in 3D space,” explains Xin Liu, arts curator at the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, “so I design the technologies that allow me to do that.”
Research affiliate Christos Makridis writes in Salon that IT skills, “are increasingly required if you want a job with upward mobility and autonomy.” Makridis argues that universities need to help students gain a working knowledge of cloud computing, big data and information security so that they can compete as the job market becomes more geared towards those that are technologically advanced.
Yahoo! reporter Elise Solé highlights how Alejandra Falla successfully completed her PhD studies at MIT while pregnant with her daughter, Clara. Clara sported a miniature MIT regalia to Commencement. “It started as a joke but we decided that Clara had earned her Ph.D. in the womb,” says Falla. “She deserved to graduate with me.”
During her Commencement address at MIT, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg urged graduates to try to make the world a better place, reports Abigail Hess for CNBC. "We are accountable to the people who use what we build, to our colleagues, to ourselves and to our values,” said Sandberg.
Boston Globe reporter Sophia Eppolito writes that during MIT’s 2018 Commencement exercises, speakers stressed the importance of uniting to create a better world. “We all strive to see the world, not as a zero-sum game, but as positive-sum — as a world where generous collaboration makes each collaborator smarter, stronger, and richer in every way,” said MIT President L. Rafael Reif.
Quartz reporter Leah Fessler writes that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Commencement address at MIT featured a call for graduates to help create more inclusive technologies and workplaces. “It’s not the technology you build that will define you. It’s the teams you build and what people do with the technology you build,” Sandberg advised.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg advocated for MIT graduates to be, “clear-eyed optimists” while speaking at MIT’s 2018 Commencement exercises, reports Ethan Wolff-Mann for Yahoo! Finance. “It’s not enough to be technologists. We have to make sure that technology serves people,” she said.
AP reporter Collin Binkley writes that during her Commencement address at MIT, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg called for equality in the technology sector. "Build workplaces where everyone — everyone — is treated with respect," she said. "We need to stop harassment and hold both perpetrators and enablers accountable. And we need to make a personal commitment to stop racism and sexism."
Prof. Daniel Jackson, MIT student Haley Cope and alumna Caterina Colon discuss the book “Portraits of Resilience” on Greater Boston with Jim Braude. According to Jackson, the hope is that by compiling the students’ stories and photographs into a book “people who were suffering could read these stories, look at these faces, and realize they were not alone.”
Laney Ruckstuhl of The Boston Globe writes about “Calculated Imagination,” the Course 2.007 Willy Wonka-themed robot competition based on “creativity and innovation.” Students are graded on their work leading up to the competition. “You can earn an ‘A’ with a robot that scores zero points but that demonstrates good engineering and design skills,” Prof. Amos Winter explains.
Graduate student John Urschel appears on the Scientific American podcast My Favorite Theorem, where he shares his love of a theorem for graph theory developed by Daniel Spielman. Urschel points out that Spielman is “one of the first people to give provable guarantees for algorithms that can solve a Laplacian system of equations in near linear time.”
Kerri Corrado of 7 News Boston reported live from this year’s Course 2.007 robot competition, where students put their homemade robots to the test on a Willy Wonka-themed course. The competition “gets the students into the design process, the manufacturing process, the building process and gets their ideas to reality,” said mechanical engineering student John Taylor Novak.
Gradute student Jonny Sun speaks with Seth Myers on Late Nate with Seth Meyers about his new book, “Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too.” The book, which follows an alien who comes to earth and learns to celebrate people’s differences, features intentional typos to emphasize “a common theme throughout the story…that it’s ok to be imperfect,” says Sun.
Katie Kindelan of Good Morning America reports on the “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck” hackathon at the Media Lab, which examined physical, socioeconomic and cultural factors affecting new mothers. “We really thought, ‘How do we attack this problem from all angles, not just technology and design but also policy and access,’” explains researcher Alexis Hope.