Author: Ms. R.

On Nov. 29, a team of young adults stood in front of a crowd at The Link coworking space in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and presented their idea for a smart, watch-like device that monitors a user’s vitals for signs of anger and prompts them with guided breathing exercises. The device would also connect via Bluetooth to a virtual reality headset that could lead the user through conflict resolution scenarios. Such high-tech presentations are common in Kendall Square, but……

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MIT-Pillar AI Collective has announced three inaugural fellows for the fall 2023 semester. With support from the program, the graduate students, who are in their final year of a master’s or PhD program, will conduct research in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science with the aim of commercializing their innovations. Launched by MIT’s School of Engineering and Pillar VC in 2022, the MIT-Pillar AI Collective supports faculty, postdocs, and students conducting research on AI, machine……

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“How do we get to making nanomaterials that haven’t been evolved before?” asked Angela Belcher at the 2023 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture at MIT on Nov. 20. “We can use elements that biology has already given us.” The combined in-person and virtual audience of over 300 was treated to a light-up, 3D model of M13 bacteriophage, a virus that only infects bacteria, complete with a pull-out strand of DNA. Belcher used the feather-boa-like model to show how her research……

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Peat bogs in the tropics store vast amounts of carbon, but logging, plantations, road building, and other activities have destroyed large swaths of these ecosystems in places like Indonesia and Malaysia. Peat formations are essentially permanently flooded forestland, where dead leaves and branches accumulate because the water table prevents their decomposition. The pileup of organic material gives these formations a distinctive domed shape, somewhat raised in the center and tapering toward the edges. Determining how much carbon is contained……

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Photolithography involves manipulating light to precisely etch features onto a surface, and is commonly used to fabricate computer chips and optical devices like lenses. But tiny deviations during the manufacturing process often cause these devices to fall short of their designers’ intentions. To help close this design-to-manufacturing gap, researchers from MIT and the Chinese University of Hong Kong used machine learning to build a digital simulator that mimics a specific photolithography manufacturing process. Their technique utilizes real data gathered……

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