At Vicarious Surgical, Adam Sachs ’13 and Sammy Khalifa ’12 are developing small robots to make minimally invasive surgery available to more patients. “The ideal form is to miniaturize yourself, go through that small incision, and go inside the patient,” Khalifa says.

A new study examines how common spaces can help foster collaboration on academic campuses. “The method affirms expectations that colleagues working physically nearer to each other are more likely to find each other,” Times Higher Ed writes.

On Thursday, MIT celebrated the most promising concepts to emerge from its two-year Climate Grand Challenges competition. “People are now sensing a much greater urgency to finding solutions,” said Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry.

Through the year-long MCSC Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program, students have the opportunity to lead research projects. “We need to motivate an all-hands effort to bring MIT talent to bear on these challenges,” Desiree Plata says.

With his startup Noya, Josh Santos ’14 aims to use existing cooling towers to remove billions of tons of carbon per year from the air: “This technology has the potential … to clean up the damage we’ve done to the planet over the last 100 years.”

Jessika Trancik spoke with ABC News about the urgent need to build a future powered by alternative energy: “We now have cost-competitive renewable primary energy in the form of solar and wind energy and also in other types of renewable energy.”