From MIT to the Navy + clean ammonia + robot insects

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MIT Weekly
January 25, 2025
Greetings! Here’s a roundup of the latest from the MIT community.
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Aiming High

Faith Brooks, wearing waders stands knee-deep in a pond, holding an instrument and a coil of rope

For MIT-WHOI graduate student Faith Brooks, the sky’s the limit: She’s now researching ways of preventing and mitigating harmful algal blooms, and will report this fall to Naval Aviation Schools Command in Florida to begin flight training.

Full story via MIT News →

Top Headlines

For clean ammonia, MIT engineers propose going underground

Using the Earth itself as a chemical reactor could reduce the need for fossil-fuel-powered chemical plants.

Full story via MIT News →

Modeling complex behavior with a simple organism

By studying the roundworm C. elegans, neuroscientist Steven Flavell explores how neural circuits give rise to behavior.

Full story via MIT News →

Study suggests how the brain, with sleep, learns meaningful maps of spaces

Place cells are known to encode individual locations, but research finds stitching together a “cognitive map” of a whole environment requires a broader ensemble of cells, aided by sleep, over several days.

Full story via MIT News →

Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact

Rapid development and deployment of powerful generative AI models comes with environmental consequences, including increased electricity demand and water consumption.

Full story via MIT News →

Building better cities for humans

As executive director of Common Wealth Development in Wisconsin, Justice Mya Castañeda MCP ’13 aims to build healthy neighborhoods on a foundation of good housing.

Full story via Slice of MIT→

#ThisisMIT

Six members of the MIT Ski Team pose for portrait at Magic Mountain ski area. Text via @‌mitskiteam: We're back! After a one-year break the MIT Ski Team is back to crushing it on the slopes! Also, we are now officially the MIT Ski and Snowboard Team and we opened the season at Magic Mountain this weekend with podiums for women's skiing and snowboarding. Next up: Middlebury College Snow Bowl!

Follow @mitskiteam on Instagram→

In the Media

You’d never know this stylish coat has a heater hidden inside // Fast Company

Ministry of Supply, a clothing brand founded by MIT alumni, has developed a machine-washable, heated jacket.

Full story via Fast Company→

Tiny insect-like robot can flip, loop and hover for up to 15 minutes // New Scientist

MIT researchers have developed an insect-like, flying robot capable of performing acrobatic maneuvers and hovering in the air for up to 15 minutes.

Full story via New Scientist→

Intrepid white dwarf has a close encounter with a massive black hole // Reuters

MIT astronomers detected X-ray flashes erupting from a supermassive black hole that seem to be caused by a nearby white dwarf.

Full story via Reuters→

Meet Your MIT Neighbor

Name: Christopher Reid
Affiliation: Postdoc at the Whitehead Institute, in the lab of assistant professor of biology Siniša Hrvatin
What is your current research focus? Our lab is interested in understanding how mammals, from rodents to primates, control and regulate their core body temperature, and what determines their different capacities for doing so.
Could you say more about the importance of mentorship to your career path? I don’t think I would be where I am if not for that opportunity to do research in my college mentor’s lab and knowing she was behind me the whole way. Her motivation for me and belief in my capability to apply to PhD programs and succeed and do well as a scientist had a large impact on me.
What are your hobbies? It’s debatable whether it’s a hobby or not, but I have started to collect a large amount of house plants.
Full interview via Whitehead Institute→

Listen

In the latest episode of the Curiosity Unbounded podcast, President Sally Kornbluth speaks with Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor of urban science and planning at MIT whose work focuses on the influence of urban design on travel behavior and quality of life. They discuss the complex forces that shape our cities and the effects of urban planning on sustainable mobility and quality of life for city residents.
Listen to the episode→

This edition of the MIT Weekly was brought to you by a guide to cafes in and around Boston. ☕

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Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

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