Samara Oster MBA '22 has founded Meli, a company that has crafted a gluten-free beer made with organic quinoa, reports Ann Trieger Kurland for The Boston Globe. “With 4.4 percent alcohol, typical of light beers, it’s produced merely with water, high-quality organic quinoa, hops, and yeast,” explains Kurland.
Lithios, a startup cofounded by Mohammad Alkhadra PhD '22 and Prof. Martin Bazant, is developing “a clean and relatively cheap way to access vast amounts of lithium,” reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Lithios has developed a lithium-absorbing material that can be made into electrodes using the same technologies created to make electrodes for lithium-ion batteries,” explains Bray.
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Fiona Murray highlights the importance of developing a new approach to capital gains tax increases. “By focusing on the underlying behaviors we want to incentivize, we can structure taxes more effectively,” explains Murray. “When we provide tax breaks to companies for spending on R&D, we do it to spur behavior we know is good for the overall health of the economy.”
Writing for Forbes, Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota SB '08, MS '16, MBA '16, shares five lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs. “Starting a business is not just about having a brilliant idea; it's about finding purpose, solving real problems and building the right team,” explains Hayes-Mota.
Seonghoon Woo PhD '15, Jongwon Choi PhD '17, Young Suk Jo SM '13, PhD '16, and Hyunho Kim SM '14, PhD '18 have co-founded Amogy – a startup company that is using ammonia produced by renewable energy as a carbon-free way to fuel a tugboat, report Jennifer McDermott and Michael Hill for The Associated Press. “Without solving the problem, it’s not going to be possible to make the planet sustainable,” says Woo. “I don’t think this is the problem of the next generation. This is a really big problem for our generation.”
Forbes reporter Amy Feldman spotlights the work of Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang, who has used his materials science research to “build an array of companies in areas like batteries, green cement and critical minerals that could really help mitigate the climate crisis.” Feldman notes that “as the climate crisis has become increasingly urgent, Yet-Ming Chiang’s ability to spin out companies from his research offers hope.”
The Boston Globe’s Angelina Parrillo interviews Jasmina Aganovic ’09 about her beauty company Arcaea, which reconstructs data from extinct flowers to produce fragrances. “I viewed fragrance as this remarkable emotional storytelling category and people don’t view science as being associated with creativity, emotion, or storytelling,” Aganovic says. “I think that that’s very far from the truth.”
Prof. Asegun Henry has been named a 2024 Grist honoree for his work developing a “sun in a box,” a new cost-effective system for storing renewable energy, reports Grist. Based on his research, Prof. Henry has founded Fourth Power, a startup working to build a prototype system that will hopefully “allow us to decarbonize electricity,” says Henry.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Thomas Kochan explores how workers, unions, CEOs and politicians can all draw lessons from the Market Basket protests in 2014. "The key lesson for workers and unions is to draw on customers and citizens as allies and sources of power," writes Kochan. "If workers’ demands make sense, customers and community members will support them."
TechCrunch reporter Kyle Wiggers spotlights Codeium, a generative AI coding company founded by MIT alums Varun Mohan SM '17 and Douglas Chen '17. Codeium’s platform is run by generative AI models trained on public code, providing suggestions in the context of an app’s entire codebase. “Many of the AI-driven solutions provide generic code snippets that require significant manual work to integrate and secure within existing codebases,” Mohan explains. “That’s where our AI coding assistance comes in.”
MIT alumni Mike Ng and Nikhil Buduma founded Ambiance, which has developed an “AI-powered platform geared towards improving documentation processes in medicine,” reports Fortune’s Allie Garfinkle. “In a world filled with AI solutions in search of a problem, Ambience is focusing on a pain point that just about any doctor will attest to (after all, who likes filling out paperwork?),” writes Garfinkle.
Anurag Bajpayee MS '08, PhD '12 and Prakash Govindan PhD '12 founded Gradiant, an MIT startup “trying to reduce both costs and energy while eliminating chemicals” in water, reports Diana Olick for CNBC. “We take highly contaminated wastewater which contains solvents, which contains dissolved salt, which contains organics, and we eliminate the entire liquid waste,” says Govindan.
After meeting at MIT, alumni Honghao Deng and Jiani Zeng founded Butr, which makes anonymous people-detecting sensors to measure movement inside buildings, reports Zoya Hasan for Forbes. The sensors could help address staffing challenges in senior living communities, and alert staff of falls or other medical issues.
Edwin Olson '00, MEng '01, PhD '08 founded May Mobility, an autonomous vehicle company that uses human autonomous vehicle operators on its rides, reports Gus Alexiou for Forbes. “May Mobility is focused above all else on gradually building up the confidence of its riders and community stakeholders in the technology over the long-term,” explains Alexiou. “This may be especially true for certain more vulnerable sections of society such as the disability community where the need for more personalized and affordable forms of transportation is arguably greatest but so too is the requirement for robust safety and accessibility protocols.”
Found Energy, co-founded by Peter Godart '15, SM '19, PHD '21, has developed a method for transforming aluminum scrap metal into energy, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “The Found Energy system could replace fossil fuel with aluminum-generated hydrogen, a gas that burns at up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but produces no waste carbon,” writes Bray.