'At MIT, we believe in the transformative power of learning by doing, and there's no better example than UROP,' says MIT President Sally Kornbluth, who attended the mixer with Provost Anantha Chandrakasan and Chancellor Melissa Nobles. 'The energy at the inaugural UROP mixer was exhilarating, and I'm delighted that students now have this easy way to explore different paths to the frontiers of research.' The event gave students the chance to explore internships and undergraduate research opportunities ' in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to the life sciences to the arts, and beyond ' all in one place, with approximately 150 researchers from labs available to discuss the projects and answer questions in real time. The offices of the Chancellor and Provost co-hosted the event, which the UROP office helped coordinate. First-year student Isabell Luo recently began a UROP project in the Living Matter lab led by Professor Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli, where she is benchmarking machine-learned interatomic potentials that simulate chemical reactions at the molecular level and exploring fine-tuning strategies to improve their accuracy. She's passionate about AI and machine learning, eco-friendly design, and entrepreneurship, and was attending the UROP mixer to find more 'real-world' projects to work on....

Zohran Mamdani will be New York City's next mayor. The Queens assembly member has rocketed from local political obscurity to national political celebrity in less than a year, making bumper-stickery campaign promises aimed at alleviating the city's cost-of-living crisis. Fast, free buses. A freeze on rents. Municipal grocery stores. Universal child care. That last proposal has gotten little attention'perhaps because a relatively small sliver of New Yorkers would directly benefit, perhaps because the proposal hinges on a tax increase Albany would have to approve, perhaps because early-childhood initiatives are so pervasively underemphasized in American life. When Mayor Bill de Blasio created a universal prekindergarten program and a near-universal 3-K program in New York a decade ago, it was rightly described as a miracle. But in many ways, that undertaking was far simpler than what Mamdani is promising. He aims to provide high-quality, year-round care to toddlers and infants as young as six weeks old, while setting day-care workers' earnings 'at parity' with those of public-school teachers. It's a cosmically aspirational set of goals, and it faces a steep set of obstacles. But if he can pull it off, the scheme would transform New York's demography and economy, constituting one of the most radical examples of policy entrepreneurship in recent memory....

The acquisition, expected to close in early 2026, will lead to the creation of Ares Systematic Credit, a new arm within Ares' $377bn Credit Group that will combine data science, technology, and fixed-income expertise to deliver scalable investment solutions. Founded in 2018 by Alex Khein and Hugh Willis, both former BlueBay Asset Management executives, BlueCove has built a proprietary investment platform that applies systematic and data-driven methods to credit markets, spanning high-yield, investment-grade, and convertible bonds. Ares first invested in BlueCove through a minority stake in 2023. Since then, BlueCove's assets under management have tripled to $5.5bn, driven by institutional demand for quantitative credit strategies. Michael Smith, Co-Head of Ares Credit Group, commented: 'Since first partnering with BlueCove, the business has grown from strength to strength, further solidifying our conviction about the future of systematic credit investing.' BlueCove CEO Alex Khein said the deal reflects a 'shared culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,' adding that joining Ares will accelerate the firm's mission to advance systematic investing within global fixed-income markets....

I've been building products and companies my entire career ' Increo, Box, Crashlytics, Twitter and now, Digits ' and I've had the privilege of speaking with some of the sharpest minds in venture and entrepreneurship along the way. One recent conversation with a legendary investor really crystallized for me a set of truths about startups: what success really is, why some founders thrive while others burn out, and how to navigate the inevitable chaos of building something from nothing. When you're building something truly generative ' driven by a purpose greater than yourself ' there's no point at which you can say 'done.' If your company has a natural stopping point, you may be building the wrong thing. You may want to start a company, but if you have to talk yourself into your idea, it probably won't survive contact with reality. The founders who succeed are often the ones who can't not work on their thing. Jeff Seibert is the founder and CEO of Digits, the world's first AI-native accounting platform. He previously served as Twitter's head of consumer product and starred in the Emmy Award-winning Netflix documentary 'The Social Dilemma.'...