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The race to deliver a Covid-19 vaccine has been likened to a moonshot, but in several ways landing a man on the moon was easier. In his new book, A Shot in the Arm: How Science, Engineering, and Supply Chains Converged to Vaccinate the World, published today by MIT CTL Media, MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi recounts the vaccine’s extraordinary journey from scientific breakthroughs to coronavirus antidote and mass vaccination.

Correll discussed MIT Freightlab's research into truck driver utilization for a Scripps National News segment on labor shortages and related factors that contribute to supply chain inefficiencies.

Watch the full video here

Yossi Sheffi talked with David Pogue for an October 11 segment on CBS Sunday Morning examining the paradox of empty store shelves, higher prices and longer wait times for good of all kinds, despite the "glut of goods" coming into the country.

"The underlying cause of all of this is actually a huge increase in demand. People did not spend during the pandemic, and then all the government help came... trillions of dollars went to households, so they ordered stuff... they ordered more and more stuff, and global markets were not ready."

MIT CTL's Jarrod Goentzel was quoted in Bloomberg Business Week

Winners of the Amazon Last-Mile Routing Research Challenge were announced in a live webinar event held on July 30, 2021. Amazon and the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics created the challenge to engage with a global community of researchers across a range of disciplines, from computer science to business operations to supply chain management, challenging them to build data-driven route optimization models leveraging massive historical route execution data. The three winning teams were awarded prize money totaling $175,000 for their innovative route optimization models.

The air transportation industry is responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions each year. Immediately before the COVID-19 crisis, the industry emitted approximately 3% of annual global GHG emissions—with that footprint projected to grow. It is therefore critical to reduce aviation GHG emissions as a part of efforts to meet global climate goals

MIT AgeLabs Joseph Coughlin as quoted in FastCompany

... A recent study showed that elderly Americans are interested in health tracking but don’t engage with wrist wearables because the devices don’t feel designed for them. For example, in the aforementioned study, older Americans said they have a hard time seeing the tiny icons and font sizes that dominate smartwatches.

MIT AgeLab's Bryan Reimer was quoted by author Benjamin Preston in Consumer Reports

...There is strong evidence that camera-based driver monitoring works, says Bryan Reimer, who heads up the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium, an academic-industry partnership supported by Consumer Reports.

"As I’ve since learned, the consensus among independent researchers is that online shopping can in fact be much less damaging to the environment than traditional, in-store shopping—but only if we do it the right way.

MIT’s Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) awards full-tuition UPS Fellowships for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years to four students across the institute.

A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. By Zachary B. Wolf. 

There have been numerous stories in recent days about problems with the supply chain as the economy starts back up after last year's unprecedented shutdowns.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS, February 4, 2021 – The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) and Walmart have teamed up to create a new custom course in supply chain management for Walmart supply chain associates from underrepresented communities who are on a leadership track. 

AgeLab Director Joseph F. Coughlin writes in Forbes:

AgeLab Director Joseph F. Coughlin answers questions from the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging:

Finding that information is one of the goals of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Freight Lab. David Correll, MIT research scientist and co-director of the Freight Lab, believes truck drivers, dispatchers, and logistics managers all need to better utilize available time. Increased time spent driving, rather than waiting at a dock, means increased truck capacity, he said.

According to Yossi Sheffi, professor at MIT and director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, supply chain is typically the “asphalt of the road” —that is, when it works, there’s no need to talk about it. 

MIT SCM ‘00 grad Marc Boyle’s company, Boyle Transportation is cited in the Wall Street Journal for its role in vaccine distribution in the U.S.

“Moving vaccines and other pharmaceutical products with strict temperature requirements is a delicate business. Carriers that specialize in such shipments typically provide what is known as temperature-validated service. Sensors and other devices monitor conditions inside the trailer and record data to confirm that the temperature remains within a certain range.

The vaccination effort that has kicked off will rely on a sprawling chain of people, processes and connections that will all have to work to make the campaign successful. The mass mobilization is one of the largest in the U.S. since the country’s factories were repurposed during World War II, the WSJ’s Sarah Krouse, Jared S. Hopkins, and Anna Wilde Mathews write, and relies on factory workers, truck drivers, pilots, pharmacists and health-care workers, among others.

Pandemic plus holidays? That equals a huge increase in online shopping and about 800 million more packages to be delivered than last year. But shipping companies and merchants that aren’t Amazon aren’t handling it all that well.