The nearest paid parking is at the Boston Marriott Cambridge Hotel.
The pace of technological innovation continues to accelerate. Fields such as artificial intelligence, life science, data science, communications, new materials, energy, novel design technology, and others are bringing paradigm changes to industry at a scale we haven’t seen before. These changes are forcing companies to acquire new core competencies in order to stay relevant in a rapidly changing landscape. What are the emerging disruptive technologies you need to watch for? How could you turn sources of disruption into fountains of future success?
Join the 2018 MIT Research and Development Conference: Accelerating Big Impact Innovations to explore these topics and more, and meet with world leading experts in these fields. In addition to plenary sessions, attendees will choose among seven tracks:
Moreover, attendees will be offered a unique opportunity to join one of three field visits on the MIT Campus after the conference. Field visits include:
Day 1: November 14 7:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Morning Plenaries at Kresge Auditorium (Bdg. W16) 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Lunch with Startup Exchange Exhibit at MIT Media Lab (Bdg. E14) 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Concurrent Tracks #1 ~ #4 at Samberg Conference Center (Bdg. E52)
Day 2: November 15 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM - Morning Plenaries at Samberg Conference Center 7th Fl. (Bdg. E52) 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM - Concurrent Tracks #5 ~ #7 at Samberg Conference Center (Bdg. E52) 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM - Site Visits to AFFOA, the Engine, and MIT IDC.
Mr. Glickman joined the Industrial Liaison Program in January 2000, serving as the MIT liaison for companies worldwide, and joined the senior management of the office in 2005.
Prior to joining ILP, Todd was Assistant Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the professional society for meteorologists, which is based in Boston. At AMS, Todd's responsibilities included strategic planning for conferences, headquarters' liaison with AMS member boards and committees, support to the AMS Council, and public relations. In addition, Todd was Managing Editor for the AMS Glossary of Meteorology (2nd edition).
From 1979 to 1994, Todd held a variety of positions with WSI Corporation of Billerica, MA, including Manager, New Product Development, Media Marketing Manager, and Manager of the Government Program Office. WSI was a pioneer in the development of real-time weather information, providing value-added information and workstations for clients in media, aviation, industry, academia, and government. Some of Todd's projects included development of the weather data/information infrastructure for The Weather Channel; the introduction of digital satellite and radar imagery for television; planning and implementation of a network of weather briefing systems for the Federal Aviation Administration; and serving as liaison with the National Weather Service and professional organizations. In addition, Todd was instrumental in helping to develop the public-private partnership between the weather information industry and the Federal government.
Concurrently, Todd has a more than 30-year career as a radio meteorologist, and has been heard on dozens of stations nationwide. Today, he can be heard occasionally on all-news WCBS Newsradio-88 in New York City. He has chaired numerous meteorological conferences and symposia, and served on a number of boards and committees for the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He was awarded the AMS Seal of Approval for Radio Weathercasting in 1979, and was elected a Fellow of the AMS in 1997.
Todd's interests include transportation systems of all types, and he is an officer and past-trustee of the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, Maine. At MIT, Todd an officer and trustee of the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, which oversees the campus radio station WMBR-FM. He also volunteers as the academic advisor to a group of MIT freshman.
Hong Fan is a Program Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT. She joined OCR in August 2016, brought with her 20+ years of international work experience across semiconductor, consumer electronics, telecom, and higher education.
Prior to joining OCR, Hong spent 12 years in the semiconductor industry with executive functions in strategic marketing, business development, corporate strategy, product management, and product marketing at Analog Devices and MediaTek. During those years, Hong played instrumental roles in identifying emerging business opportunities related to wireless communication networks, smartphones, wearable devices, Internet of Things (IoT), and medical devices and applications. She led cross-functional teams in defining and driving product and market strategy for businesses with annual revenue ranging from $30 million to $100 million.
Prior to joining the semiconductor industry, Hong spent 6 years in the telecommunications and electronics industry, leading engineering teams at companies such as Lucent Technologies and Watkins-Johnson Company for the development of digital signal processing, wireless communications, and micro-controller software.
Before coming to US, Hong was a strategic research staff at the President Office of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of the oldest universities in China. She was the first woman to hold this highly selective position.
Hong has a B.S in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland at College Park, and an MBA from Sloan School of Management at MIT. She received numerous academic honors and awards including the McKinsey & Co. Scholarship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Shanghai Outstanding College Graduate Award.
Baaziz Achour is Senior VP of engineering at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., where he is responsible for global research and development activities associated with wireless technologies, such as WLAN, Position Location, 3G, 4G, and now 5G. Achour has overseen systems engineering activities in QCT since 2002 and all of Wide Area Network wireless modems development since 2006. Prior to joining QCT, Achour held a systems leadership role in the design and commercialization of the world’s first CDMA base station and later Qualcomm’s first cdma2000 handsets. Achour holds an MS and PhD from Tufts University and more than 30 patents. His research interests include Multimode protocols, signal processing, communication theory, and cognitive radio.
Two current technology domains rendering intense focus and attention are 5G and Artificial Intelligence. These technologies will be the foundation for a new wave of innovation that will transform industries around the world and ultimately enrich our lives. We will explore how 5G is relevant to much more than peak data rates, including how its ultra-low latency and high reliability in combination with on-device AI will enable powerful new use cases. We will also discuss the important practical challenges that technology leaders must face to achieve this vision. You will learn from a leader of a company that is inventing breakthrough technologies which transform how the world connects, computes, and communicates how 5G and on-device intelligence will transform the wireless edge.
Director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Eric Evans is Director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded R&D center that focuses on technology development and system prototyping for national security needs.
Evans is vice-chair of the Defense Science Board, has advised the US Strategic Command Senior Advisory Group, and serves as president of the Executive Committee of the National GEM Consortium, which supports graduate education for minorities. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Fellow of IEEE and AIAA. He holds a BS, MS, and PhD in electrical engineering from The Ohio State University.
MIT Lincoln Laboratory researches and develops a broad array of advanced technologies to meet critical national security needs. Lincoln Laboratory has a strong focus on designing and building full-scale advanced technology and operational prototypes for US government sponsors. Recent examples of full-scale prototypes include the ground and space laser communications terminals that enabled the world’s fastest data download from the moon to the earth; the highest-resolution long-range microwave radar for imaging satellites in orbit; and a beam-combined, all-electric fiber laser that achieved the highest brightness ever recorded. Dr. Evans will discuss recent innovations at Lincoln Laboratory and the processes and conditions for sustaining such an innovation environment.
Ann DeWitt, General Partner & COO of The Engine, was most recently at Sanofi, where she held senior roles in business development and strategic venture investment. Prior to Sanofi, she was at Flagship Ventures. DeWitt started her career in R&D at 3M Company, working across fields of materials, biology, and engineering. DeWitt holds an MBA from Harvard and a PhD in chemical engineering from MIT. She serves on the Board of Women in the Enterprise of Science and Technology and on the Life Science Council of Springboard Enterprises.
Founded by MIT, The Engine bridge the gap between discovery and commercialization by empowering disruptive technologies with the longterm capital, knowledge, and specialized equipment and labs they need to thrive. We help founders build the next generation of world-changing companies.
Manager, Business Development and Marketing, MIT Professional Education
Eric Bergemann is Senior Director of Executive Programs at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he oversees a portfolio of non-degree executive programs. He has worked with firms in the fields of energy, pharmaceuticals/life science, mobility, high technology, banking/finance, and consumer products. Bergemann is active in business development, and is the Executive Education capability development leader in Program & Instructional Design Methodology and Improvement. In 2009, he received the MIT Sloan Appreciation Team Award.
Hashim Sarkis is the dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. Prior to that, he was at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) as the Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism. Dean Sarkis has held numerous visiting appointments around the world, including at the American University of Beirut and the Metropolis Program in Barcelona. He was selected to serve as director/curator of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.
In addition to his academic work, Sarkis is principal of Hashim Sarkis Studios (HSS), established in 1998 with offices in Boston and Beirut. The architectural and urban projects of HSS include affordable housing, houses, parks, institutional buildings, urban design, and town planning.
HSS has received several awards for its projects, including for the Housing for the Fishermen of Tyre, Byblos Town Hall, and the Courtower Houses. The firm’s work has been exhibited around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the biennales of Venice, Rotterdam, Shenzhen/Hong Kong, and Valparaiso.
His work has also been published extensively, including in a monograph by Ness.docs and in the Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture (2008), with the Housing for the Fishermen of Tyre selected as one of the most significant buildings of the century. He also received numerous teaching awards while at Harvard University.
Sarkis is the author and editor of many articles and books that have filled important gaps in the history of modern architecture and urban design. These include Circa 1958: Lebanon in the Pictures and Plans of Constantinos Doxiadis and the edited CASE: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital; Josep Lluis Sert: The Architect of Urban Design (with Eric Mumford); The World as an Architectural Project (with Roi Salgueiro Barrio and Gabriel Kozlowski); and Biennale Architettura 2021: How Will We Live Together? (official catalog).
Sarkis was a founding member of Plan B, the Institute for Urban Design Studies in Lebanon and the Middle East, and the Arab Center for Architecture. He has served on the board of several organizations, including the Association for Rural Development in Southern Lebanon. He holds professional registration with the Beirut Order of Engineers and Architects.
Sarkis has a BArch and BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MArch from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He received his PhD in architecture from Harvard University for his thesis Publics and Architects: Re-engaging Design in the Democracy.
Scott Kirsner is a journalist who writes about innovation and entrepreneurship. His “Innovation Economy” column appears Sundays in the Boston Globe, and he is also editor of the site Innovation Leader (www.innovationleader.com), which focuses on R&D, product development, corporate venturing, and new initiatives within large companies. Scott has been a regular contributor to Fast Company, BusinessWeek, Variety, and Wired. His books include Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, a technological history of Hollywood. He can be reached at scott@innovationleader.com and his Twitter handle is @ScottKirsner.
Lane Ballard is vice president of Materials & Manufacturing Technology within Boeing Research & Technology (BR&T). BR&T provides innovative technologies that enable the development of future aerospace solutions while improving the cycle time, cost, quality, and performance of existing Boeing products and services. Ballard oversees a team of scientists, technologists, technicians, and engineers who lead company research and development in metals and ceramics, chemical technology, nondestructive evaluation, composite fabrication processes, composite materials, assembly and automation, mechanical parts, and production services in ergonomics. His team is responsible for reducing the cost of materials and growing the company’s advanced manufacturing capabilities by taking a systems-level view of operations, identifying opportunities for low and high rate production, and developing new market-changing technologies.
Jerry Gupta is a Senior Vice President at Swiss Re, one of the largest reinsurance companies in the world. Previously he was the Global Head of Program Management at Amazon. Prior to that Jerry created and managed the Innovation and Venture groups at Liberty Mutual Insurance. Jerry is a technologist and data scientist, experienced in finding Product-Market fit and developing user experiences that delight customers. He has launched new businesses both as an entrepreneur and within Fortune 100 setting. He has conducted due-diligence on transactions worth over $3B in aggregate value and has raised over $25M in private placements. In addition, he has been on the board of or an advisor to several start-ups in the US and in Spain. Jerry has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He is currently working towards a Master's degree in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University and has received his MS in Computer Sciences from Bentley University.
Jayanthi (Jay) Iyengar joined Xylem in 2015 and is responsible for leading the Company’s global R&D, technology and innovation activities as well as evaluating the technological landscape and accelerating the Company’s customer-driven innovation agenda.
Steve Whittaker is a chief research professional at BT and is responsible for partnerships with US universities and business schools. He has a background in computer science and intelligent systems and spent more than 10 years as a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab. Before moving to the US, Whittaker held a number of research and research management roles at BT’s research labs in the UK. He has broad interests, including emerging technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, and software-based networking, the impact of digital technology on society, and the management of innovation.
Marcus Dahllöf leads MIT Startup Exchange, which facilitates connections between MIT-connected startups and corporate members of the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP). Dahllöf manages networking events, workshops, the STEX25 accelerator, opportunity postings, and helps define the strategic direction of MIT Startup Exchange. He is a two-time tech entrepreneur (one exit in cybersecurity), and has previously held roles in finance, software engineering, corporate strategy, and business development at emerging tech companies and Fortune 100 corporations in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. Marcus was a member of the Swedish national rowing team and he is a mentor at the MIT Venture Mentoring Service.
Dale Fried developed integrated optical waveguide devices for telecom applications at Clarendon Photonics until joining MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 2004. He played leadership roles developing prototype airborne Geiger-mode ladar systems for wide-area mapping and foliage poke-through applications. Fried founded 3DEO in 2014 to bring Geiger-mode ladar into widespread application, and holds nine granted patents. Fried earned his PhD in atomic physics from MIT for the experimental realization of Bose-Einstein condensation in atomic hydrogen.
Hyunjun Park is passionate about using biology to address complex challenges. As cofounder and CEO of CATALOG, he is leading the effort to handle the explosion of digital information, using cutting edge tools of synthetic biology. Park obtained his BS at Seoul National University, PhD in microbiology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and conducted postdoctoral research in synthetic biology at MIT.
Ophir Gaathon has led DUST Identity’s interdisciplinary team since its formation and through several successful DARPA programs. He is a subject matter expert in diamond nano-engineering with over a decade of hands-on experience. Gaathon received his PhD from Columbia University, where he developed novel methods to realize the next generation sensors and computing platforms using diamonds. He is an author of over 30 publications and co-inventor of technologies related to hardware security, diamond processing, and imaging. Gaathon maintains a research affiliation at the Quantum Engineering Group at MIT.
Matthew Pearlson is a research specialist in the department of aeronautics and astronautics engineering at MIT. A chemical engineer and software developer by training, he is an expert in alternative fuels and renewable energy systems. For the last two years, his side hustle has been developing the Foam Printing Project, a new spin on a 30-year-old 3D printing technique that may reduce material cost and part weight by up to 75% in the near future.
Christine Yen is cofounder and CPO of Honeycomb, a solution for cloud-native observability in the distributed systems era. Since receiving her BS in computer science from MIT, Yen has built systems and products at companies large (Google, Facebook) and small (Aardvark, Parse) and likes to have her fingers in as many pies as possible.
Daisy Zhuo is a cofounding partner of Interpretable AI. She has extensive experience developing business solutions using advanced predictive and prescriptive analytics and AI systems in a variety of industries, including healthcare, banking, insurance, and information technology. She holds a PhD in operations research from MIT, during which she developed a range of cutting-edge machine learning techniques such as Optimal Imputation and Robust Classifications, with publications in top academic journals.
Melissa Fensterstock is CEO of Landsdowne Labs, a spin out from the Langer & Karp Labs. Landsdowne Labs is a materials science company currently tackling challenges in the medical device space. Previously, Fensterstock ran corporate development for a publicly traded biotech pharmaceutical company and started her career at Stryker Orthopedics. She was also a Robert S. Kaplan Life Science Fellow at Harvard Business School, where she earned her MBA, and holds an MPhil in bioscience enterprise from the University of Cambridge and a BA in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins.
Karan Kashyap is cofounder and CEO at Posh, a Boston-based conversational AI startup focused on powering contextually aware bots for enterprises. Kashyap graduated from MIT with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in computer science, where his research focused on AI and natural language processing.
Dan Sturtevant cofounded Silverthread in 2013 to commercialize 15 years of Harvard and MIT research on improving business outcomes for complex software projects. From 2012 through 2015, he researched the empirical foundations of Silverthread’s predictive analytics for design quality and software economics. Sturtevant holds a BS in computer engineering from Lehigh University and an MS in engineering and management and PhD in engineering systems from MIT.
Chris Hartshorn is the CEO and cofounder of Xibus Systems. Prior to this, he was Chief Research Officer at Lux Research, providing emerging technology intelligence and strategic advice to hundreds of the world's most innovative companies and agencies, and Chief Technology Officer at Callaghan Innovation, the government agency responsible for catalyzing innovation in and for New Zealand. Via these roles, and technology management and product development roles in GE’s materials businesses, Hartshorn brings first-hand experience in commercializing multidisciplinary solutions drawing from physical, life, and data sciences.
MIT Startup Exchange actively promotes collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry. Qualified startups are those founded and/or led by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni, or are based on MIT-licensed technology. Industry participants are principally members of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP).
MIT Startup Exchange maintains a propriety database of over 1,500 MIT-connected startups with roots across MIT departments, labs and centers; it hosts a robust schedule of startup workshops and showcases, and facilitates networking and introductions between startups and corporate executives.
STEX25 is a startup accelerator within MIT Startup Exchange, featuring 25 “industry ready” startups that have proven to be exceptional with early use cases, clients, demos, or partnerships, and are poised for significant growth. STEX25 startups receive promotion, travel, and advisory support, and are prioritized for meetings with ILP’s 230 member companies.
MIT Startup Exchange and ILP are integrated programs of MIT Corporate Relations.
Assistant Group Leader, Bioengineering Systems & Technologies MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Paula Pomianowski Collins is the Assistant Group Leader for MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Bioengineering Systems & Technologies Group. In this role, she oversees development and evaluation efforts to advance integrated wearable sensing for improved health and human performance, primarily in support of military operations. Over the course of her 20 year career at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Collins has gained extensive experience with multi-modal “systems-of-systems” sensor architectures, complex large-scale human-in-the-loop data collection, and data analysis for objective evaluation of proposed advanced capabilities.
With the proliferation of commercial wearable devices, we are now able to obtain unprecedented insight into the ever-changing physical state of our bodies. These devices allow real-time monitoring of biosignals that can generate actionable information to enable optimized interventions to avoid injury and enhance performance. Combat and medical planners across all military services are keenly interested in harnessing wearable sensor advances to diagnose, predict, and improve warfighter health and performance. However, moving from civilian promise to military reality is complex, with unique requirements of hardware design, real-time networking, data management, cybersecurity, predictive model building, and decision science. Emerging technologies for military on-the-move monitoring will be highlighted, along with a discussion of an integrated open systems architecture approach for functional evolution.
Dr. Farzana Khatri is a Senior Staff Member in the Optical Communication Technology group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, MA. She is currently the Lead System Engineer and Operations Lead for the lasercom links for NASA’s Laser Enhanced Mission Communications and Navigation Operational Service (LEMNOS) program. She was a key player in the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) project, a first-of-its-kind, record-breaking Moon to Earth free space laser communication system demo. Her roles in the LLCD project have included system engineering, test bed design, system /subsystem /spacecraft I&T, and operations. Before coming to Lincoln in 2002, Farzana worked at AT&T/Tyco Submarine Systems and at Sycamore Networks. She received the S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1990, 1992, and 1996.
Traditionally, communications between the Earth and space have relied on radio frequency (rf) systems, which have been in use since the Apollo era when sensor technology was primitive and the Internet did not exist. Today, commercial companies have deployed satellites with sensors that generate many Terabytes of data each day, but only a fraction of this data is transmitted back to earth due to communications bandwidth constraints. Furthermore, as humans venture deeper into space, higher communications bandwidth will be required to support them. Free-space laser communications, or “lasercom,” offers a high bandwidth and low size, weight, and power solution to the space bandwidth bottleneck by using the same lasers and techniques which revolutionized fiber-optic communications in the 1990’s. This talk will detail the 15+ year collaboration between MIT Lincoln Lab and NASA in architecting and deploying lasercom systems, the current efforts to develop a strong industry base in lasercom, and upcoming lasercom missions.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Air Force Contract No. FA8702-15-D-0001. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Senior Staff of the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Leonard M. Johnson is a senior staff member in the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group, where he is engaged in device technology programs for wideband, high-speed, and low-power applications, including radar, signal processing, and computation. He is currently managing an effort to develop superconductive single-flux-quantum integrated circuits for high-speed, ultralow-power digital computation.
Recently at the Laboratory, he led a technology development effort for highly compact wideband digital receiver/exciter modules for phased array radar applications. This effort encompasses the design of state-of-the-art silicon germanium integrated circuits, advanced multichip-module (MCM) packaging, and wideband digital firmware. In earlier efforts, Dr. Johnson developed key photonic technologies for wide-dynamic-range fiber-optic antenna remoting and optical beamforming systems.
Currently, he is engaged in applying microwave photonic technology to wideband signal processing applications. In addition, he has been engaged in numerous study efforts focused on advanced electronic technologies for Department of Defense systems.
Dr. Johnson has authored or coauthored numerous papers and conference presentations in the fields of electronic and optical device technology. Recently, he presented short courses and tutorials on integrated circuit technology for phased array radar applications at conferences such as the IEEE Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium and the IEEE International Symposium on Phased Array Systems and Technology.
Dr. Johnson received BS, MS, and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all in electrical engineering. As a graduate student, he conducted early research on lithium niobate integrated optical devices for sensing applications.
Incredible progress in transistor-based integrated circuits has continued to drive advances in computing, despite the end of scaling for performance parameters, including clock speed and operating voltage. As the limited remaining options for improving CMOS-based circuits are pursued, superconductor-based integrated circuits offer a promising alternative with demonstrated clock speeds of hundreds of gigahertz and highly energy-efficient operation. Recent progress towards superconducting integrated circuits with a million Josephson junctions and complex, lossless interconnects will be described. Additionally, some of the challenges in developing systems with computing capabilities and cost that are competitive with CMOS-based systems will be discussed in the context of the most promising near-term applications. This work was supported in part by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via Air Force Contract FA872105C0002. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the ODNI, IARPA, or the U.S. Government.
Leader of the Advanced Imager Technology Group MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Daniel J. Ripin is the Leader of the Advanced Imager Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He has responsibility for research and development of advanced visible and infrared focal-plane arrays, cameras, and read-out electronics that enable new system capabilities. Prior to taking this position in 2017, Ripin led the Laser Technology and Applications Group where he developed high-energy laser systems, beam combining, and optical sensing technology. Dan received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Emory University and a doctorate in physics from MIT.
Over the past few decades, affordable high-resolution imagery has become ubiquitous and broadly applied for scientific discovery, defense, industry, and entertainment. This transformation was enabled by the transition of photography from analog film-based cameras to modern digital imagery, along with simultaneous improvement in compact optics, data processing, storage, and communication. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has been a key innovator helping to drive this transition with the prototyping of high-performance digital imaging systems. This talk will discuss recent improvements in imaging system speed, sensitivity, and resolution. The path to incorporate greater processing and intelligence into the imager itself will also be discussed.
This material is based upon work supported by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering under Air Force Contract No. FA8702-15-D-0001. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
Postdoctoral Fellow MIT Department of Chemistry
At MIT, I am surrounded by people who are willing to take risks and think in new ways about the big scientific challenges of our times. My colleagues keep challenging my thinking, forcing me to reconsider my understandings and exposing beliefs formed from dogma. This attitude naturally leads to unique research questions which, in my opinion, allow for truly new insight into how nature works. Despite working in the chemistry department, I am interacting and collaborating with friends from various branches of science and engineering, thus constantly enlarging my scientific horizons. For me, MIT is unique because everyone contributes to an environment which fosters mutual intellectual growth in a way that I would not want to trade for anything else. My postdoctoral experience at MIT allows me to get in touch not only with the present but also with the future leaders in my field of research. The faculty, whom I find easy to approach, are throughout highly accomplished in their field of research and uniquely connected around the world. At the same time the Ph.D. students and postdocs are highly ambitious and will take on leading roles in science in the future. I find it great to get in touch with these amazing people as equals and friends. These bonds will remain and continue to provide highly stimulating scientific and enjoyable personal interactions.
Society's impending transition to a low-carbon energy economy will require new technologies that utilize renewable electricity to drive the conversion of waste carbon dioxide into valuable fuels, chemicals, and materials. In principle, this conversion can be achieved using an electrochemical device consisting of two catalysts: one that promotes the conversion of water to oxygen and another that converts carbon dioxide into a desired product. Whereas established catalysts exist for oxygen evolution, high-efficiency catalysts for carbon dioxide conversion are virtually non-existent, due to a lack of understanding the reaction mechanisms that gate the formation of one product over another. This talk will describe prospects and recent advances in carbon dioxide valorization that will be essential for realizing a low-carbon energy future.
Senior Research Scientist MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Anuradha Annaswamy received her PhD in electrical engineering from Yale University in 1985. She has been a member of the faculty at Yale, Boston University, and MIT, where she is currently the director of the Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory and a senior research scientist in the department of mechanical engineering. Her research interests pertain to adaptive control theory and applications to aerospace, automotive, and propulsion systems; cyber physical systems science; and CPS applications to Smart Grids, Smart Cities, and Smart Infrastructures. She is the author of a hundred journal publications and numerous conference publications, co-author of a graduate textbook on adaptive control (2004), co-editor of several reports including “Systems & Control for the future of humanity, research agenda: Current and future roles, impact and grand challenges,” (Elsevier) “IEEE Vision for Smart Grid Control: 2030 and Beyond,” (IEEE Xplore) and Impact of Control Technology, (ieeecss.org/main/IoCT-report, ieeecss.org/general/IoCT2-report).
Dr. Annaswamy has received several awards including the George Axelby and Control Systems Magazine best paper awards from the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), the Presidential Young Investigator award from NSF, the Hans Fisher Senior Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technische Universität München, the Donald Groen Julius Prize from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, a Distinguished Member Award, and a Distinguished Lecturer Award from IEEE CSS. Dr. Annaswamy is a Fellow of the IEEE and IFAC. She has served as the Vice President for Conference Activities (2014-15), and is currently serving as the VP for Technical Activities (2017-18) in the Executive Committee of the IEEE CSS.
Accelerated penetration of distributed energy resources (DER) for power generation and demand response (DR), the notion of just-in-time flexible consumption, are enabling the transformation from the current power grid structure to a modernized, cyber-enabled grid. In order to carry out an efficient design of Transactive Systems, a tightly integrated design of wholesale and retail markets and pricing policies is needed that incentivizes end-users' participation, accommodates physical constraints, and enables global objectives through local and distributed decision-making.
This talk will outline how this integrated design of wholesale and retail markets can be carried out. The two streams of research investigations from our lab will be featured: one is a dynamic wholesale market mechanism with the ability to make decisions at multiple time-scales, and the other is a hierarchical architecture capable of achieving volt-var control in the presence of large penetration of DERs and DRs. We will discuss how the results from these can be combined to result in an overall hierarchical Transactive architecture for smart distribution grids.
Martin Bazant is the E. G. Roos (1944) Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mathematics and Executive Officer of the department of chemical engineering at MIT. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the International Society of Electrochemistry and the Royal Society of Chemistry and has won multiple awards. Bazant's research focuses on mathematical modeling of transport phenomena, especially in electrokinetics and electrochemical systems. Noteworthy contributions include theories of induced-charge electro-osmosis, control of phase separation in Li-ion batteries, and a new method of water desalination -- “shock electrodialysis.” His educational innovations include the first graduate-level massive open online course (MOOC) in applied mathematics or chemical engineering. Bazant also consults extensively for industry and serves as the Chief Scientific Advisor for Saint Gobain Ceramics and Plastics, North America R&D Center in Northboro, MA. Bazant holds a PhD in physics from Harvard University.
The rapid, stable cycling of rechargeable batteries requires well-controlled phase transformations of the redox active materials in each electrode, between the charged and discharged states. In Li-ion batteries, common intercalation materials, such as graphite and iron phosphate, undergo phase separation (into Li-rich and Li-poor phases), which limits the power density and causes degradation. A general mathematical theory, supported by recent x-ray imaging experiments, will be presented that shows how phase separation can be controlled by electro-autocatalytic reactions. For Li-metal batteries, theoretical and experimental results will be presented for the stability of lithium electrodeposition, controlled by electrokinetic phenomena in charged porous separators.
Ju Li has held faculty positions at the Ohio State University and University of Pennsylvania, and is presently a chaired professor at MIT. His group investigates the mechanical, electrochemical, and transport behaviors of materials, as well as novel means of energy storage and conversion. Li is a recipient of the 2005 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2006 Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award, and the TR35 award from Technological Review. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014 and a Fellow of the Materials Research Society in 2017. Thomson Reuters/Clarivate included Li in its Highly Cited Researchers list in 2014/2018 in Materials Science category. In 2016, he co-founded one of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) Low-Carbon Energy Centers, the Center for Materials in Energy and Extreme Environments (CME).
Three material examples will be presented to demonstrate how the fundamental understanding of nanoscale mechanisms can inform and inspire the development of new macroscale materials and devices. These materials include a reversible Li metal anode in battery, ton-scale radiation-resistant metallic nanocomposite, and thermal shock synthesis of high-entropy-alloy nanoparticle catalysts. Recent advances in nano-manipulation, environmental TEM, and MEMS allow us to investigate coupled mechanical and electrochemical phenomena with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. For example, we can now quantitatively characterize liquid-solid and gas-solid interfaces at nm-scale. These experiments greatly complement our modeling efforts, and together they help provide insights into how materials are transformed in synthesis and how they behave in service due to combined electrochemical-mechanical forces. Applying theory, modeling, and lab-on-a-chip microscopy with cost modeling can judiciously guide the scalable production of high-performance energy materials.
Principal Research Scientist MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Daniel Weitzner is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group and teaches Internet public policy in MIT’s Computer Science Department. His research includes development of accountable systems architectures to enable the Web to be more responsive to policy requirements.
From 20011-2012, Weitzner was the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy in the White House. He led initiatives on privacy, cybersecurity, Internet copyright, and trade policies promoting the free flow of information,. He was responsible for the Obama Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the OECD Internet Policymaking Principles.
Weitzner has been a leader in the development of Internet public policy from its inception, making fundamental contributions to the successful fight for strong online free expression protection in the United States Supreme Court, and for laws that control government surveillance of email and web browsing data.
Weitzner is a founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology, led the World Wide Wed Consortium’s public policy activities, and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In 2012 he was named to the Newsweek/Daily Beast Digital Power Index as a top ‘Navigator’ of global Internet public policy and in 2013 he received the International Association of Privacy Professional’s Leadership Award.
Head of Strategic Partnerships, Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) MIT Media Lab
Alin Dragos heads strategic partnerships for MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and also leads product management for the DCI's efforts on Layer 2 solutions for scaling public blockchains. Before MIT, he was a vice president at First Data Corporation, leading a family of products for banking the unbanked. In this role, he was responsible for a $200M P&L and an organization of about 200 employees. Dragos also spent three years in the startup world, raising seed funds, scaling up business models, and managing a post-acquisition integration. He holds an MBA from the University of Arkansas and an MS from MIT.
Layer 2 is currently used as an umbrella term for all operations that are performed “off chain” and use blockchains to settle transactions. This is based on the work of Tadge Dryja, who is one of the authors of the Lightning Network paper, and he continues to lead the DCI’s research in this area. The Lightning Network is one of the first applications of payment channels, and we’re confident we’ll see more. Another application we’ve been working on involves smart contracts. In order to create useful smart contracts, we need oracles, data feeds that verify real-world occurrences and submit this information in a format that can be used in a blockchain.
Executive Director, Connection Science MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Stephen serves as The Managing Director of the Connection Science/Human Dynamics and is the key management lead, with responsibility for managing a team of faculty, staff and students, in creating an innovation-centric culture, to produce robust implementations of research software. Liaising with key external stakeholders, he increases awareness of, and engagement in, the programs, initiatives, and projects.
Previously, Stephen served as Technical Director at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL). Earlier, he served as Director of Systems Engineering, reporting to MIT's CIO. He is the founder of the MIT CIO Summit, the MIT CIO Symposium, and the MIT Kerberos Consortium. Stephen received the Andrew W. Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration in 2007.
The MIT Trust Data Consortium aims to provide people, organizations, and computers the ability to manage access to their data more securely, efficiently, and equitably, while protecting personal data from incursion and corruption. As we have moved from the analog world to the digital world, our data, security, and governance systems have not kept pace. This has created numerous issues ranging from data insecurity (such as the large-scale government and private sector data losses of recent years) to a widening digital divide between rich and poor, including the global disenfranchisement of over 1.5 billion people who lack legal identity.
Senior Lecturer MIT Sloan School of Management
Gary Gensler is Senior Advisor to the Director, MIT Media Lab, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan of Management and Chairman of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission. He formerly was Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, leading the Obama Administration’s reform of the $400 trillion swaps market. During the Clinton Administration, he was Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. Previously, Gensler was a partner at Goldman Sachs. He earned his MBA and BSE from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is a recipient of the 2014 Tamar Frankel Fiduciary Prize.
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Mathias Kolle joined the faculty of MIT as an assistant professor in 2013. His research focuses on the identification of unique biological light control mechanisms for optical sensing, communication, and energy conversion and the development of bio-inspired, adaptive and actively-tunable photonic and micro-optical materials and devices. Kolle earned his degree in physics from Saarland University in Germany and the University of Lorraine in France in 2006 and his PhD from the University of Cambridge in the UK at the Cavendish Laboratories. Kolle also held a Feodor Lynen research fellowship for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for postdoctoral studies at the school of engineering and applied sciences at Harvard University.
A curious look at biological light manipulation concepts reveals a myriad of versatile approaches for the creation of bio-inspired optical materials. Soft and fluid matter, in particular, plays an important role in dynamic biological photonic systems. My research group aims to design, manufacture, and apply dynamic, responsive optical materials and devices. We explore synergies between soft and fluid matter, established and novel optical design concepts, and insights into nature's light manipulation strategies. We center our efforts on three topics: Soft and fluid matter for optical design, strategies for enabling multifunctionality at the materials level, and structure formation in biological optical materials.
Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry MIT Department of Chemistry
Professor Moungi Bawendi received his A.B. in 1982 from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1988 from The University of Chicago. This was followed by two years of postdoctoral research at Bell Laboratories, working with Dr. Louis Brus, where he began his studies on nanomaterials. Bawendi joined the faculty at MIT in 1990, becoming Associate Professor in 1995 and Professor in 1996.
Professor Bawendi has followed an interdisciplinary research program that aims at probing the science and developing the technology of chemically synthesized nanocrystals. Prof. Bawendi has been at the forefront of the science and technology of semiconductor nanocrystal quantum dots for over two decades. This work has included the development of novel methods for synthesizing, characterizing, and processing quantum dots and magnetic nanoparticles as novel materials building blocks, studying the fundamental optical properties of quantum dots using a variety of spectroscopic methods, including the development of optical tools to study single nanocrystals, and combining quantum dots with various optical and electronic device structures to study their device properties. His work has also included developing applications of quantum dots in biological and biomedical imaging and sensing, in light emitting devices, photodetection, and solar energy conversion.
Professor Bawendi has published over 250 papers on the science and technology of quantum dots and other materials systems, and has helped four start-up companies in commercializing quantum dot technology. A fifth company spun out from Bawendi’s laboratory uses knowledge gained from his work on quantum dots, applying it to a medical device.
Bawendi has won numerous awards for his work. Among these are the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the EO Lawrence award in Materials Chemistry from the US Department of Energy, the Fred Kavli Distinguished Lecture in Nanoscience from the Materials Research Society, and the American Chemical Society Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry.
Bawendi is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Our laboratory focuses on the science and applications of nanocrystals, especially semiconductor nanocrystal (aka quantum dots). Our research ranges from the very fundamental to applications in electro-optics and biology. There is an ongoing effort to address the challenges of making new compositions and morphologies of nanocrystals and nanocrystal heterostructures, and new ligands so that the nanocrystals can be incorporated into hybrid organic/inorganic devices, or biological systems. We are collaborating with a number of biology and medical groups to design nanocrystal probes that meet specific challenges.
Mark Bathe is a Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, Director of the MIT New Engineering Education Transformation, Member of the Harvard Medical School Initiative for RNA Medicine, and Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. He obtained his Doctoral Degree at MIT working in the Departments of Mechanical, Chemical, and Biological Engineering before moving to the University of Munich as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow to carry out his postdoctoral research in Biological Physics. He returned to MIT in 2009 to join the faculty in the Department of Biological Engineering, where he runs an interdisciplinary research group focused on engineering nucleic acids for application to vaccines, therapeutics, structural biology, and computing. He is academic co-founder of Cache DNA, Inc. and Kano Therapeutics, Inc., and in his free time he enjoys running, biking, swimming, and skiing amongst other outdoor activities.
siRNAs, mRNAs, and most recently CRISPR offer entirely new classes of therapeutics that have transformative potential for the treatment of acquired and genetic diseases which are currently untreatable with protein- or small molecule-based drugs. However, a major challenge for the translation of these nucleic acid-based therapeutics to the clinic is their targeted delivery in vivo, which should be both highly specific and have controlled toxicity and immunogenicity. Synthetic nucleic acids can now be designed to replace viral and lipid nanoparticle carriers by encapsulating therapeutic nucleic acid payloads themselves within structured nucleic acid assemblies in order to control their tissue targeting and release properties. In this talk, I will present our platform technology for this purpose, namely designing and synthesizing structured nucleic acid nanoparticles to deliver therapeutic siRNA, mRNA, and CRISPR ribonucleoprotein complexes, as potential replacements for viral vectors and lipid nanoparticles.
Angela Belcher is a materials chemist with expertise in biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces, and solid-state chemistry. Her work focuses on evolving organisms to build new materials and devices for clean energy, electronics, the environment, and medicine. Belcher was awarded the 24th annual MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the 2004 Four Star General Recognition Award, and was named the 2006 Scientific American’s Research Leader of the Year. Her work has been published in many prestigious scientific journals, including Science and Nature, and has been reported in the popular press, including Fortune, Forbes, Discover, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Belcher holds a BS in creative studies and PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Organisms have been making exquisite inorganic materials for over 500 million years. Although these materials have many desired physical properties such as strength, regularity, and environmentally benign processing, the types of materials that organisms have evolved to work with are limited. However, there are many properties of living systems that could be potentially harnessed by researchers to make advanced technologies that are smarter, more adaptable, and are synthesized to be compatible with the environment. One approach to designing future technologies with properties that can be easily used by living organisms is to evolve the organisms to work with a more diverse set of building blocks. The goal is to have a DNA sequence that codes for the synthesis and assembly of any inorganic material or device. We have been successful in using evolutionarily selected peptides to control physical properties of nanocrystals and subsequently use molecular recognition and self-assembly to design biological hybrid multidimensional materials. These materials could be designed to address many scientific and technological problems in electronics, environmental remediation, medicine, and energy applications. Currently this technology is being used to design new methods for building batteries, fuel cells, solar cells, carbon sequestration and storage, environmental remediation, catalysis, and medical diagnostics and imaging. We will consider the conditions under which organisms first evolved to make materials and scientific approaches which move beyond naturally evolved materials to genetically imprint advanced technologies, including examples in lithium and sodium ion batteries, lithium-air batteries, environmental clean-up, and ovarian cancer imaging and treatment.
Professor Thompson joined the MIT faculty in 1983. He is Director of MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory and co-Director of the Skoltech Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage. His research interests include processing of thin films and nanostructures for applications in microelectronic, microelectromechanical, and electrochemical systems. Current activities focus on development of thin film batteries for autonomous microsystems, IC interconnect and GaN-based device reliability, and morphological stability of thin films and nano-scale structures. Thompson holds an SB in materials science and engineering from MIT and a PhD in applied physics from Harvard University.
Materials research enables and advances technologies that meet challenges and opportunities in energy, sustainability, health, learning, and security. Inherently multidisciplinary in nature, and involving faculty in almost every department at MIT, materials research links methods and mechanisms of materials synthesis to nano- and micro-scale structure and the structure of materials to their properties. Iterative investigation of these linkages promotes a cycle of innovation delivering broadly applicable new materials. Development of computational techniques for materials discovery, design, and synthesis from data mining, machine learning, and first principles calculations of physical and chemical properties expedites innovation. New tools for probing atomic-scale structure and chemistry and for nano- and micro-scale in situ observations of materials synthesis and the responses of materials to applied forces and fields enhance progress. New methods for quantifying the sustainability and potential market impact of new materials technologies provide a holistic context for materials research. MIT researchers are playing lead roles in development of these new methodologies.
CEO, AFFOA Former Director, MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics
Yoel Fink is the CEO of AFFOA and former Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). RLE is MIT’s first interdisciplinary lab, with over 700 researchers and $60M a year budget.
Yoel is also Professor of Materials Science and Electrical Engineering. His research group has pioneered the field of multimaterial multifunctional fiber devices, and is focused on extending the frontiers of fiber materials to encompass electronic, optoelectronic and even acoustic properties for textile and composite applications.
Professor Fink holds a B.A. in Physics and a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the Technion, and a PhD from MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is the recipient of multiple awards, among them the National Academies Initiatives in Research (2004), the MacVicar Fellowship (2007) for outstanding teaching and the Collier Medal (2016). Professor Fink is a co-founder of OmniGuide Inc. (2000) and served as its chief executive officer from 2007–2010. He presided over its commercial launch, established an 80% gross margin business and grew it to $20M. He is the coauthor of over ninety scientific journal articles and holds over fifty issued U.S. patents on multimaterial fibers and devices. As RLE Director, he initiated the Translational Fellows Program, a postdoc initiative that facilitates research-derived ventures, and the Low Cost Renovation effort. Additionally, during his tenure as director, the Lab has become fully endowed.
Our clothes help define us, yet the fabrics we wear have remained functionally unchanged for thousands of years. Recent breakthroughs in fiber materials and manufacturing processes allow us to design and wear fabrics that see, hear, communicate, change color, and monitor health — heralding the dawn of a “fabric revolution.” Our mission at Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) is to lead the convergence of advanced technology into fibers (“Moore’s Law for fibers”) resulting in fabric products that deliver value-added services to the user (“Fabrics as a service”).
Aude Oliva, PhD is the MIT director in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and director of strategic industry engagement in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, leading collaborations with industry to translate natural and artificial intelligence research into tools for the wider world. She is also a senior research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where she heads the Computational Perception and Cognition group. Oliva has received an NSF Career Award in computational neuroscience, a Guggenheim fellowship in computer science and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship in cognitive neuroscience. She has served as an expert to the NSF Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering on the topic of human and artificial intelligence. She is currently a member of the scientific advisory board for the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Her research is cross-disciplinary, spanning human perception and cognition, computer vision and cognitive neuroscience, and focuses on research questions at the intersection of all three domains. She earned a MS and PhD in cognitive science from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France.
The MIT Quest for Intelligence (The Quest) aims to build on MIT’s rich history of innovation and impact in the study of intelligence, our next step towards the future. Comprised of two linked entities, The Core and The Bridge, The Quest aims to advance two fundamental intelligence challenges: Can we reverse engineer intelligence? And, how can we deploy our current and expanding understanding of intelligence to the benefit of society?
* Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA): Heralding the dawn of the future fabric that can see, hear, sense, communicate, store energy, and more. * The Engine: A home for tough tech founders building the next generation of world-changing companies. * International Design Center (IDC): Center for radical design innovation for relevant solutions. IDC faculty and researchers forge unique collaborations with industry to innovate, excite and change the world through intense design innovation.
Senior Research Scientist Head, Spoken Language Systems Group (SLS) MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
James Glass is a senior research scientist at MIT, where he leads the Spoken Language Systems Group in CSAIL. He is also a member of the Harvard-MIT health sciences and technology faculty. Since obtaining his SM and PhD from MIT in electrical engineering and computer science, his research has focused on automatic speech recognition, unsupervised speech processing, and spoken language understanding. He is an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the International Speech Communication Association, and is currently an Associate Editor for Computer Speech and Language.
Despite continuous advances over many decades, automatic speech recognition remains fundamentally a supervised learning scenario that requires large quantities of annotated training data to achieve good performance. This requirement is arguably the major reason that less than 2% of the worlds' languages have achieved some form of ASR capability. Such a learning scenario also stands in stark contrast to the way that humans learn language, which inspires us to consider approaches that involve more learning and less supervision.
In our recent research towards unsupervised learning of spoken language, we are investigating the role that visual contextual information can play in learning word-like units from unannotated speech. This talk will outline our ongoing research in CSAIL to develop deep learning models that are able to associate images with unconstrained spoken descriptions, and present analyses that indicate that the models are learning correspondences between associated objects in images and their spoken instantiation.
Vikash Mansinghka is a Principal Research Scientist at MIT, where he leads the Probabilistic Computing Project. Vikash holds S.B. degrees in Mathematics and in Computer Science from MIT, as well as an M.Eng. in Computer Science and a PhD in Computation. He also held graduate fellowships from the National Science Foundation and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. His PhD dissertation on natively probabilistic computation won the MIT George M. Sprowls dissertation award in computer science, and his research on the Picture probabilistic programming language won an award at CVPR. He co-founded three VC-backed startups: Prior Knowledge (acquired by Salesforce in 2012), Empirical Systems (acquired by Tableau in 2018), and Common Sense Machines (co-founded in 2020). He served on DARPA’s Information Science and Technology advisory board from 2010-2012, currently serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Machine Learning Research and the journal Statistics and Computation, and co-founded the International Conference on Probabilistic Programming.
Leslie Kaelbling is a Professor at MIT. She has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford, and was previously on the faculty at Brown University. She was the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Machine Learning Research. Her research agenda is to make intelligent robots using methods including estimation, learning, planning, and reasoning. She is not a robot.
The fields of AI and robotics have made great improvements in many individual subfields, including in motion planning, symbolic planning, probabilistic reasoning, perception, and learning. Our goal is to develop an integrated approach to solving very large problems that are hopelessly intractable to solve optimally. We make a number of approximations during planning, including serializing subtasks, factoring distributions, and determinizing stochastic dynamics, but regain robustness and effectiveness through a continuous state-estimation and replanning process. I will describe our initial approach to this problem, as well as recent work on improving effectiveness and efficiency through multiple types of learning.
Jack Dunn is a cofounding partner of Interpretable AI. He has developed many novel analytics approaches, including the Optimal Trees methodology, and has considerable experience applying machine learning and AI to problems in both research and industry settings. Dunn holds a PhD in operations research from MIT.
This talk introduces a new generation of machine learning methods that provide state of the art performance and are very interpretable, introducing optimal classification (OCT) and regression (ORT) trees for prediction and prescription with and without hyperplanes. This talk shows that (a) Trees are very interpretable, (b) They can be calculated in large scale in practical times, and (c) In a large collection of real world data sets, they give comparable or better performance than random forests or boosted trees. Their prescriptive counterparts have a significant edge on interpretability and comparable or better performance than causal forests. Finally, we show that optimal trees with hyperplanes have at least as much modeling power as (feedforward, convolutional, and recurrent) neural networks and comparable performance in a variety of real world data sets. These results suggest that optimal trees are interpretable, practical to compute in large scale, and provide state of the art performance compared to black box methods.
Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Chair, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering MIT Department of Chemical Engineering
Fikile Brushett is an associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT, where he holds the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Chair. His research focuses on advancing electrochemical technologies for a sustainable energy economy, with a particular fascination around the fundamental processes that define the performance, cost, and lifetime of present day and future electrochemical systems. Brushett holds a BSE in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Electrochemical Energy Storage group at Argonne National Laboratory.
Electrochemical energy storage is emerging as a critical technology to enable sustainable electricity generation by alleviating intermittency from renewable sources, reducing transmission congestion, enhancing grid resiliency, and decoupling generation from demand. While several different rechargeable batteries have been proposed for and demonstrated in these applications, further cost reductions are needed for ubiquitous adoption. As such, recent research has focused on the discovery and development of new chemistries. Though exciting, most of these emerging concepts only consider new materials in isolation rather than as part of a battery system. Understanding the critical relationships between materials properties and overall battery price is key to enabling systematic improvements. In this presentation, I will discuss an approach to mapping feasible design spaces for incipient energy storage systems through techno-economic modeling and to using this knowledge to identify critical pathways at an early stage in the research and development process. While redox flow batteries will be used as an exemplar technology, the methods to be described here are applicable to a wide range of electrochemical systems and envisioned applications.
Rafael Jaramillo is the Thomas Lord Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. His research sits in the big, fun space between materials science, solid state physics, and opto-electronic technologies. His current interests can be characterized as defect and phase engineering of chalcogenide semiconductors, with an emphasis on developing processing methods to control sulfide and selenide thin films. Prior to joining the faculty at MIT, he worked as a postdoc at Harvard and at MIT on topics in oxide electronic materials and chalcogenide thin-film solar cells. He earned his Ph.D. from The University of Chicago for work on antiferromagnetism and quantum phase transitions in chromium. Dr. Jaramillo is the recipient of numerous awards including the Rosalind Franklin Young Investigator Award from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, the Department of Energy SunShot Potdoctoral Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER). He lives in Cambridge, MA, with his wife and kids.
Chalcogenide materials interact strongly with light, have widely-tunable semiconducting properties, and are the basis for many applications in optics and electronics. This presentation consists of our work developing new materials for photonics and photovoltaics. We propose layered, two-dimensional chalcogenides as a new class of active materials for controlling light in integrated photonics systems using the concept of resonant, martensitic phase transformations. We propose sulfide perovskites as a new class of materials for thin film photovoltaics, mimicking the excellent PV performance of lead halide perovskites but without problems of stability or toxicity. Finally, we discuss a new application of “old” materials: low-cost chemical sensors based on the photoconductive response of binary metal chalcogenides.
Rafael Gomez-Bombarelli (Rafa) is the Jeffrey Cheah Assistant Professor at MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering since 2018. His works aims to fuse machine learning and atomistic simulations for designing materials and their transformations. The Gomez-Bombarelli group works across molecular, crystalline and polymer matter, combining novel computational tools in optimization, inverse design, surrogate modeling and active learning with simulation approaches like quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics. Through collaborations at MIT and beyond, they develop new practical materials such as therapeutic peptides, organic electronics for displays, electrolytes for batteries, or inorganic oxides for sustainably catalysis.
Rafa received BS, MS, and PhD (2011) degrees in chemistry from Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), followed by postdoctoral work at Heriot-Watt (UK) and Harvard Universities, and a stint in industry at Kyulux North America. He has been awarded the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation "Machine Learning in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Awards" in 2022 and the Google Faculty Research Award in 2019.
Machine learning is disrupting multiple fields of human endeavor: healthcare, transportation, finance, communications, etc. Materials design is no exception in this disruption. Data-driven approaches can access the information embedded in years of experiments, perform rapid optimization of high-dimensional experimental conditions and design parameters, or design new molecules automatically. The Gomez-Bombarelli group at MIT combines cutting-edge machine learning models on experimental data with automation in physics-based atomistic simulations (molecular dynamics, electronic structure) to rapidly design and optimize new materials in multiple areas, such as: inverse chemical design of small molecules (drug-like molecules that optimally bind biological sites, organic-light emitting diode emitters, and organic battery electrolytes); virtual discovery of soft materials (lithium-conducting polymers and OLED transport materials); and chemical reactivity in the condensed phase (zeolite design for catalysis and chemical and thermal stability of organic electronics). There is great interest in using machine learning as the connector between multiple time and length scales: from electronic structure, to atomistic molecular dynamics, to coarse-grained models.
Juejun (JJ) Hu received the B.S. degree from Tsinghua University, China, in 2004, and the Ph.D. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, in 2009, both in materials science and engineering. He is currently the Merton C. Flemings Career Development Associate Professor at MITs Department of Materials Science and Engineering. His primary research interest is enhanced photonmatter interactions in nanophotonic structures, with an emphasis on on-chip spectroscopy and chemical sensing applications using novel infrared glasses. Prior to joining MIT, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware from 2010 to 2014., Hu has authored and coauthored more than 60 refereed journal publications since 2006 and has been awarded six U.S. patents. He has been recognized with the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development award, the Gerard J. Mangone Young Scholars Award, the University of Delaware College of Engineering Outstanding Junior Faculty Member, the University of Delaware Excellence in Teaching Award, among others.,Dr. Hu is currently the Deputy Editor of the OSA journal Optical Materials Express, and he is a Member on technical program committees for conferences including MRS, CLEO, OSA Congress, ACerS GOMD, ICG, and others. (Based on document published on 13 September 2016)
Optical spectrum analysis is the cornerstone of spectroscopic chemical sensing, optical network performance monitoring, RF spectrum analysis, and hyperspectral infrared imaging. On-chip spectrometers have recently emerged as a promising alternative to their benchtop counterparts with apparent size, weight, and power advantages. We demonstrate a novel on-chip digital Fourier transform (dFT) spectrometer that can acquire high-resolution spectra within a millimeter-sized footprint. The device, fabricated and packaged using industry-standard silicon photonics technology, offers dramatically boosted signal-to-noise ratio and unprecedented scalability capable of addressing exponentially increasing numbers of spectral channels. We further implemented machine learning regularization techniques to spectrum reconstruction and achieved significant noise suppression and spectral resolution enhancement beyond the classical Rayleigh criterion. Potential applications of the device in industrial process control, ubiquitous chemical identification, environmental monitoring, and optical communications will be discussed.
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Systems MacVicar Faculty Fellow MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Maria Yang is an associate professor of mechanical engineering and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT, and is founder and director of the Ideation Lab (ideation.mit.edu) and faculty academic director for the MIT D-Lab. Her work considers the process of design, focusing on the key role of design representation in driving the early stages of the design process, from consumer products to complex, large scale systems. She is an ASME Fellow and has received the NSF CAREER award and the ASEE Merryfield Design Award. She earned her SB from MIT and her MS and PhD from Stanford University, all in mechanical engineering. Yang previously served as director of design at Reactivity, a Silicon Valley startup now a part of Cisco Systems.
The act of designing is one of the most powerful activities a human being can engage in, both for the designer and for the people that are being designed for. At the same time, design is one of the most challenging topics to teach effectively in the engineering classroom, in part because of its inherently ambiguous and sociotechnical nature. In this talk, I’ll discuss my approach to uncovering the fundamental nature of design through controlled studies. I'll discuss findings from our recent experimental research, including work on the design of products to encourage users to behave more sustainably, and also strategies for helping designers work collaboratively with increasingly powerful computational tools. The goal of this research is to link design process with design outcomes in order to help students and practitioners better manage design ambiguity. Looking forward to the future of design, I’ll also discuss examples of design and engineering contexts that have defied expectations in attracting a broad range of new students to STEM fields through human-centered design.
Michael Short joined the faculty in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering in July, 2013. He brings 15 years of research experience in the field of nuclear materials, microstructural characterization, and alloy development. His group’s research is a mixture of large-scale experiments, micro/nanoscale characterization, and multiphysics modeling & simulation. The main areas of Short’s research focus on 1) Non-contact, non-destructive measurement of irradiated material properties using transient grating spectroscopy (TGS) more, 2) Preventing the deposition of deleterious phases, such as CRUD in nuclear reactors, as fouling deposits in energy systems more, and 3) Quantification of radiation damage by stored energy fingerprints more. This last project was recently selected for an NSF CAREER award.
The largest technical impediments to the long-term viability of current nuclear reactors and the potential future of advanced ones are crud buildup and radiation damage. Can a coating with optical properties that match those of the surrounding water help eliminate the adhesion of oxide particles to fuel cladding surfaces? What steps are being taken to further the study of radiation damage and how can transient grating spectroscopy (TGS) help to provide more data? Professor Michael Short will discuss how recent science-first approaches to these problems are helping to stop these technical impediments.
Marcelo Coelho is the Head of Design at Formlabs and a lecturer and researcher in the MIT Department of Architecture. Spanning a wide range of media, processes, and scales, his work explores the boundaries between matter and information, fundamentally expanding and enhancing the ways in which we design and create. Coelho’s work has been exhibited internationally, including places such as the Olympics Ceremonies, Times Square, and Ars Electronica, and can be found in museums, private collections, and millions of products sold all over the world. He holds a doctorate degree from the MIT Media Lab.
Digital fabrication and computational materials are enabling the design and manufacturing of objects that are mass-customizable, interconnected, and can fundamentally adapt to users’ needs and requirements. This talk will present a series of research projects and technologies that push the boundaries of how materials and computers can be intertwined to create new products and experiences — from the nanoscale to a stadium, from a single person to a crowd — and that redefine how we perceive and interact with physical world.
Lecturer MIT Department of Architecture
Ben Fry is founder and principal of Fathom Information Design, a studio in Boston focused on understanding complicated data problems, and a lecturer at MIT. Fry has authored multiple books and develops "Processing" — the programming environment cocreated with Casey Reas used by artists, engineers, scientists, and students worldwide since 2001. His work can be found in museums, feature films, research labs, and the portfolios of Fathom's clients, such as Nike, JPMorgan, DARPA, and National Geographic. He holds a PhD from the MIT Media Lab.
While Google's mission is to organize the world's information, this information needs to made understandable and usable. We hear a lot about data, and worse, “big data,” but far too little about its meaning and how to make it approachable for the people who need to use it. The solution is to treat data as a design problem, where it can be addressed by starting with end users and working back to the data in all its messy complexity. We can only make progress if we first consider audience and context, forcing us to reformulate the questions at hand and to reconsider the technical decisions and approaches made behind the scenes.