“As professors, we produce papers and patents, but people are the most important thing we produce,” Desirée Plata told C&EN. “The faculty of the world are training the next generation. … We need patient chemists who want to solve important problems.”

MIT spinout Gradiant builds water recycling, treatment, and purification solutions for some of the world’s largest companies. “Our specialty is in the extreme water challenges that can’t be solved with traditional technologies,” Anurag Bajpayee SM ’08, PhD ’12 says.

Sometimes, it’s better to train an AI agent in an environment — like a Pac-Man game with predictable ghosts — that’s less noisy or random than the setting where it will be deployed, researchers found. Their work could help robots perform better in uncertain conditions.

Via @mitmuseum on Instagram: “After five years of meticulous planning and hard work, the MIT Museum Collection Team has completed the monumental task of relocating over 1.5 million objects to a new off-site collections facility!”

Luca Carlone works to give robots a more human-like awareness of their environment, so they can interact with people safely and seamlessly. “Perception is a big bottleneck toward getting robots to help us in the real world,” he says.

Builders pour concrete into temporary molds called formwork. Researchers have now invented a way to make these structures out of on-site soil. “It has the potential for immediate impact and doesn’t require changing the nature of the construction industry,” Sandy Curth says.