Synthetic data + why methane emissions matter + trophy season

Associate Professor Desiree Plata, director of the MIT Methane Network, is developing technologies and strategies for environmental sustainability.

As a visiting researcher at MIT, Rita Anoh learned about molecular machines and the value of collaborations.

Vishnu Jayaprakash SM ’19, PhD ’22 won for the AgZen-Cloak, an invention that makes pesticides stick to crops, minimizing pollution and water waste.

Professors Daron Acemoglu and David Autor discuss the forces driving working-class voters toward the Republican Party. “Elites are making choices that are not good news for non-college workers,” Acemoglu says. “In fact, they are bad news for most workers.” Autor adds: “The class and cultural resentments that were inflamed by the China trade shock (alongside other technological, cultural, and political forces) are now so burned-in that I strongly suspect that they are self-perpetuating.”

Professor of the practice Alan Lightman is the host of an upcoming docuseries, “Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science,” which will premiere on PBS in January. “Lightman’s areas of inquiry are as vast as the universe and as tiny as the smallest particle of matter.” He brings to his explorations “the rigor of a scientist and the artistic sensibility of a poet.”