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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Could lab-grown plant tissue ease the environmental...
It takes a lot to make a wooden table. Grow a tree, cut it down, transport it, mill it … you get the point. It’s a decades-long process. Luis Fernando Velásquez-García suggests a simpler solution: “If you want a table, then you should just grow a table.” Researchers in Velásquez-García’s group have proposed a way to grow certain plant tissues, such as wood and fiber, in a lab. Still in its early stages, the idea is akin in some...

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Understanding antibodies to avoid pandemics
Last month, the world welcomed the rollout of vaccines that may finally curb the Covid-19 pandemic. Pamela Björkman, the David Baltimore Professor of Biology and Bioengineering at Caltech, wants to understand how antibodies like the ones elicited by these vaccines target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19. She hopes this understanding will guide treatment strategies and help design vaccines against future pandemics. She shared her lab’s work during the MIT Department of Biology’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) seminar series,...

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Dædalus, journal of the American Academy of...
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and the MIT Press recently announced that Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy, will now be an open-access publication. The MIT Press has published Dædalus on behalf of the academy since 2003. Years of volumes and hundreds of essays previously behind a paywall have been ungated and made freely available. “Open access to Dædalus is a meaningful way to support the best interests of authors and audiences, and increase the impact...

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An intro to the fast-paced world of...
The field of artificial intelligence is moving at a staggering clip, with breakthroughs emerging in labs across MIT. Through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), undergraduates get to join in. In two years, the MIT Quest for Intelligence has placed 329 students in research projects aimed at pushing the frontiers of computing and artificial intelligence, and using these tools to revolutionize how we study the brain, diagnose and treat disease, and search for new materials with mind-boggling properties. Rafael...

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MIT Sloan’s Gary Gensler to be nominated...
Gary Gensler, a leading finance expert and a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has been picked by President-elect Joe Biden as his nominee to be chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Gensler is a veteran of both public service and the private sector, and has been a proponent of reform and transparency in financial markets. He is perhaps best known for his influential tenure as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission...

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Katie Hammer named vice president for finance
Katherine “Katie” Hammer, who is currently the chief deputy CFO for the City of Detroit, will become MIT’s next vice president for finance (VPF), effective Feb. 16. Before moving to Michigan, Hammer served in leading public finance roles for the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Executive Vice President and Treasurer Glen Shor announced the appointment today in an email to MIT faculty and staff. “With her strong financial and operational skills, commitment to service, and collaborative...

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Transforming quantum computing’s promise into practice
It was music that sparked William Oliver’s lifelong passion for computers. Growing up in the Finger Lakes region of New York, he was an avid keyboard player. “But I got into music school on voice,” says Oliver, “because it was a little bit easier.” But once in school, first at State University of New York at Fredonia then the University of Rochester, he hardly shied away from a challenge. “I was studying sound recording technology, which led me to...

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3 Questions: Daron Acemoglu on the “dangerous...
Two stunning events on Jan. 6 — rioters invading the U.S. Capitol, and roughly 140 GOP members of Congress voting not to certify the presidential election results in certain states — have intensified national concern about the future of American democracy. To extend the discussion, MIT News spoke with MIT economist and Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu, who has written extensively about democratic institutions, political dynamics, and the way democracy increases economic growth. Acemoglu’s most recent book, “The Narrow Corridor,”...

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Biden taps Eric Lander and Maria Zuber...
President-elect Joseph Biden has selected two MIT faculty leaders — Broad Institute Director Eric Lander and Vice President for Research Maria Zuber — for top science and technology posts in his administration. Lander has been named Presidential Science Advisor, a position he will assume soon after Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. He has also been nominated as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), a position that requires Senate confirmation. Biden intends to elevate the Presidential...

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James DiCarlo named director of the MIT...
James DiCarlo, the Peter de Florez Professor of Neuroscience, has been appointed to the role of director of the MIT Quest for Intelligence. MIT Quest was launched in 2018 to discover the basis of natural intelligence, create new foundations for machine intelligence, and deliver new tools and technologies for humanity. As director, DiCarlo will forge new collaborations with researchers within MIT and beyond to accelerate progress in understanding intelligence and developing the next generation of intelligence tools. “We have discovered...

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Fiercely supporting student welfare and resilient growth
Professors Jesse Kroll and Cathy Drennan are enthusiastic, whether students are sharing exciting early experimental results or raising concerns about public speaking. The two have been honored by a student-driven process as “Committed to Caring” for their dedication to students’ well-being and futures and for their ardent advocacy for student needs. Jesse Kroll: Congenial community Jesse Kroll is an associate professor in MIT’s departments of Chemical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering. He joined the MIT faculty in 2009 after...

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Model analyzes how viruses escape the immune...
One reason it’s so difficult to produce effective vaccines against some viruses, including influenza and HIV, is that these viruses mutate very rapidly. This allows them to evade the antibodies generated by a particular vaccine, through a process known as “viral escape.” MIT researchers have now devised a new way to computationally model viral escape, based on models that were originally developed to analyze language. The model can predict which sections of viral surface proteins are more likely to...

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Envisioning an equitable, inclusive low-carbon future
“Some say working on climate is a marathon, not a sprint, but it’s more an ultramarathon — an endurance sport if ever there was one,” said Kate Gordon, the senior climate policy advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom of California. “And look, women excel at those: We know how to dig in and get stuff done.” Gordon’s remarks in her first-day keynote address set the tone for the ninth annual U.S. Clean Energy Education & Empowerment (C3E) Symposium and Awards,...

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Scientists seek insight into Parkinson’s, addiction by...
Two MIT neuroscientists have been awarded grants from the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation to screen for genes that could help brain cells withstand Parkinson’s disease and to map how gene expression changes in the brain in response to drugs of abuse. Myriam Heiman, an associate professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a core member of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; and Alan...

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A new lens on real estate design
Natasha Sadikin, a master’s student in the MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE), was fascinated by the relationship between people and spaces long before her career in real estate development. A portrait and nature photographer since high school, Sadikin says her work acts as a mirror to her many interests. “My photography reflects two different sides of me,” she says. “One focuses on the human subject and the intimate, romantic nuances between people, and the other zooms out into the...

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