Talking outside the tower
Walking into MIT can feel like entering a foreign country — one with a number for every building and an unwieldy acronym for every organization. Deeper conversations are even more opaque, as fields and sub-fields command their own complex scientific argot. But if the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that bridging the gap between scientists and their wider society is more important than ever. The School of Engineering's EECS Communication Lab, in partnership with the MIT Libraries, is working to bridge that communications gap and help research scientists translate their findings for lay audiences in a series of talks called “Science Snippets.”
Sustainable solutions at home and abroad
Arnav Patel is a self-described sustainability enthusiast. Working on solutions related to climate change has been a central thread woven throughout his time at MIT. As a first-year student, he was initially drawn to mechanical engineering because he wanted to keep his options open.
Healing with hydrogels
In November, mechanical engineering PhD candidate Hyunwoo Yuk earned the top prize at the Collegiate Inventors Competition hosted by the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame. Yuk was named the graduate winner for his invention SanaHeal, a bioadhesive tape that can easily bind to tissues or organs. The tape could one day be used in place of sutures to promote healing and minimize complications after surgery.
A hands-on class responds to Covid
When Professor Stefanie Mueller needed to adapt her laboratory class to the Covid-19 pandemic, she was initially overwhelmed by the amount of work that would need to be done. That’s because Mueller’s hands-on building and fabrication class, 6.810 (Engineering Interactive Technologies), is entirely about the ways that humans interact with technology in the physical world. As it turns out, however, technology held some surprises — even for Mueller.
Faster tracking of treatment responses
When MIT announced plans to welcome back some undergraduates, ramp up research operations, and increase the number of staff on campus this past fall, its administration was faced with the challenge of doing so in a way that minimized the risk of an outbreak on campus. In typical MIT fashion, several teams of engineers and researchers started designing and building solutions to protect the campus community.
Deploying no-contact vitals-sensing kiosks across campus
When MIT announced plans to welcome back some undergraduates, ramp up research operations, and increase the number of staff on campus this past fall, its administration was faced with the challenge of doing so in a way that minimized the risk of an outbreak on campus. In typical MIT fashion, several teams of engineers and researchers started designing and building solutions to protect the campus community.
Cracking the Secrets of an Emerging Branch of Physics
Thanh Nguyen is in the habit of breaking down barriers. Take languages, for instance: Nguyen, a third-year doctoral candidate in nuclear science and engineering (NSE), wanted “to connect with other people and cultures” for his work and social life, he says, so he learned Vietnamese, French, German, and Russian, and is now taking an MIT course in Mandarin. But this drive to push past obstacles really comes to the fore in his research, where Nguyen is trying to crack the secrets of a new and burgeoning branch of physics.
Lessons from the Clean Air Car Race 50 Years Later
1970 was a milestone year for efforts to combat air pollution. On April 22, the first Earth Day was celebrated. The 1970 Clean Air Act was the first policy to establish federal regulations on car and industry emissions. In July, President Nixon announced his plan to establish the United States Environmental Protection Agency by the end of the year. In the midst of this progress, a team of MIT students and faculty, with assistance from Caltech, organized the Clean Air Car Race – a competition to see which of the many entrants could make the 3,600 miles from MIT to Caltech in fast, rally-style race, while meeting new stringent emissions standards.
Exploring speech recognition with industry experts
Lillian ‘Lilly’ Papalia, a rising junior in mechanical engineering, is enrolled in the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET)'s Autonomous Machines thread. Her team won the GM/MIT Blacktop Build during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) and in doing so carried forward a NEET tradition — NEET Autonomous Machines student Sebastian Uribe was among four winners of the first hackathon sponsored by GM during IAP 2018. The challenge in 2020, was to explore how to simulate human and environmental acoustics for speech recognition and performance testing.
The impact of climate change on the ocean
When deciding on a major, one thing was clear for Michelle Kornberg — she didn’t want to be stuck inside for four years. “I like the environment of working on something in the lab, but I grew up in a very outdoorsy family,” she says. “I definitely knew I didn’t want to be inside all the time.”