June 27, 2025

The Download: how to clean up AI data centers, and weight-loss drugs’ side effects

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This battery recycling company is now cleaning up AI data centers In a sandy industrial lot outside Reno, Nevada, rows of battery packs that once propelled electric vehicles are now powering a small…

Irene T. Cheng, SM ’78

January 4, 2024
“Thinking big, aiming high, and making a difference were rules of the road embedded during my time at MIT,” says Irene Cheng, SM ’78, who went on to a successful Wall Street career as a managing director at Lazard Asset Management after earning a graduate degree in chemical engineering from the Institute. “I was helped…

The art of unearthing history

January 4, 2024
Filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri, SM ’17, uses diverse media and techniques to delve deeply into his cultural identity, connecting him with the colonial history of his family’s ancestral home: Goa, India. An alumnus of the Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program, Sanzgiri uses a unique approach combining such things as analysis of historical texts and 3D…

Can AI provide better customer service?

January 4, 2024
Customer service experiences can really stick with you—a positive interaction can inspire brand loyalty, and a negative one can prompt a complete boycott. But encounters with automated customer interfaces, which often rely on limited phone menus or inept chatbots, rarely generate rave reviews. So Liz Tsai ’11, SM ’13, came up with an alternative. In…

Calculating the costs of war

January 4, 2024
What can be done to prevent war? That’s the question that drives Neta Crawford, PhD ’92, who chaired the political science department at Boston University from 2018 until 2022 and is now a professor of international relations at Oxford University.  The answer, she believes, is for people to reject armed conflict as an acceptable way…

“Every project is a new adventure,” says architectural shape-shifter

January 4, 2024
When Royal Dutch Shell solicited proposals for a new research center in Belgium in 1985, it received the usual series of plans for lifeless concrete bunkers. Philippe Samyn, SM ’73, took a different tack. Noting the site’s sloping valley and charming beech forest, he envisioned a grouping of administrative buildings and labs connected by streets…

One week left to apply to speak at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024

January 4, 2024

Hello, and welcome to 2024! If, like us, you’re still burning off a holiday sugar rush, here’s the perfect way to focus your energy and boost your reputation as a thought-leader at the same time. Apply to speak at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024, taking place on April 25 in Boston, and share your hard-won expertise […]

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Qualcomm next-gen XR chip promises up to 4.3k resolution per eye

January 4, 2024

Just ahead of CES, Qualcomm today announced the next generation of its Snapdragon XR platform, the aptly named XR2+ Gen 2. The new system-on-a-chip promises up to a 4.3k resolution per eye at 90 frames per second (and a slightly reduced resolution at 120 fps), as well as a 2.5x GPU performance increase and 8x […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.