Human and Technology Collaboration – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Borrowing from MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, what if the goal were to create combined human/machine systems that were more intelligent than either people or machines could be alone? What if the future were not only computational but sustainable as well?
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has, for decades, tried to create computer programs that can behave as intelligently as humans. From the traditional AI point of view, letting people help a program while it is running is considered cheating. But what if that were fine? Could we solve problems like climate change by having AI assist scientists and policy makers? Taking this further, what if that collaboration is what’s needed?
Join the 2019 MIT Research and Development Conference: Human and Technology Collaboration to explore the work at MIT to investigate how humans collaborating with technology can solve some of the world’s biggest problems. We will also touch on some of the implications of this evolution/revolution on people and systems design.
In addition to plenary sessions, attendees will choose among eight tracks:
Day 1 Tracks: Track 1 - Environmental Solutions Initiative Track 2 - Design in the Digital Era Track 3 - Toward the Singularity: The Next Generation of Human-Machine Collaboration Track 4 - Robots-Humans and Interactions
Day 2 Tracks: Track 5 - MIT Lincoln Lab Technologies Track 6 - Quest for Intelligence Track 7 - The Human Element Track 8 - Changing Landscape of Mobility - Disruptive Forces and Technologies
Karl Koster is the Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations. MIT Corporate Relations includes the MIT Industrial Liaison Program and MIT Startup Exchange.
In that capacity, Koster and his staff work with the leadership of MIT and senior corporate executives to design and implement strategies for fostering corporate partnerships with the Institute. Koster and his team have also worked to identify and design a number of major international programs for MIT, which have been characterized by the establishment of strong, programmatic linkages among universities, industry, and governments. Most recently these efforts have been extended to engage the surrounding innovation ecosystem, including its vibrant startup and small company community, into MIT's global corporate and university networks.
Koster is also the Director of Alliance Management in the Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT). OSATT was launched in Fall 2019 as part of a plan to reinvent MIT’s research administration infrastructure. OSATT develops agreements that facilitate MIT projects, programs and consortia with industrial, nonprofit, and international sponsors, partners and collaborators.
He is past chairman of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), an organization that seeks to enhance the value of collaborative partnerships between universities and corporations.
He graduated from Brown University with a BA in geology and economics, and received an MS from MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to returning to MIT, Koster worked as a management consultant in Europe, Latin America, and the United States on projects for private and public sector organizations.
Patrick J McGovern (1959) Professor of Management Founding Director, Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) MIT Sloan School of Management
Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. At MIT, he is also a Professor of Information Technology and a Professor of Work and Organizational Studies. Previously, he was the founder and director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science and one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on “Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century.” Professor Malone teaches classes on organizational design, information technology, and leadership, and his research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology.
For example, Professor Malone predicted, in an article published in 1987, many of the major developments in electronic business over the following 25 years, including electronic buying and selling for many kinds of products. Then, in 2004, Professor Malone summarized two decades of his research in his critically acclaimed book The Future of Work. His newest book, Superminds, appeared in May 2018. Professor Malone has also published over 100 articles, research papers, and book chapters; he is an inventor with 11 patents; and he is the co-editor of four books.
Malone has been a cofounder of four software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. His background includes work as a research scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Ph.D. from Stanford University, an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich, and degrees in applied mathematics, engineering, and psychology.
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) explores how people and computers can be connected so that – collectively – they act more intelligently than any person, group, or computer has ever done before. CCI brings together faculty from across MIT to conduct research on how new communications technologies are changing the way people work together. This first-of-its-kind research effort draws on the strengths of many diverse organizations across the Institute in a collaborative mission to understand collective intelligence at a deep level in order to create and take advantage of the new possibilities it can enable. Center Director Tom Malone will provide an overview of CCI’s insights and direction for the future.
David Mindell is an engineer and historian. An expert in human relationships with robotics and autonomous systems, he has led or participated in more than 25 oceanographic expeditions. From 2005 to 2011 he was Director of MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. He is the author of five books and co-founder of Humatics Corporation, which develops technologies to transform how robots and autonomous systems work in human environments.
The remarkable progression of innovations that imbue machines with human and superhuman capabilities is generating significant uncertainty and deep anxiety about the future of work. Whether and how our current period of technological disruption differs from prior industrial epochs is a source of vigorous debate. But there is no question that we face an urgent sense of collective concern about how to harness these technological innovations for social benefit. To meet this challenge, the Institute launched the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future in spring 2018.
Germeshausen Professor, Professor of Media Technology, Head, Fluid Interfaces Research Group
Pattie Maes is the Germeshausen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. She runs the Fluid Interfaces research group, which does research at the intersection of Human Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence with a focus on applications in health, wellbeing and learning. Maes is also a faculty member in MIT's center for Neuro-Biological Engineering. She is particularly interested in the topic of cognitive enhancement, or how wearable, immersive and brain-computer interface systems can actively assist people with issues such as memory, attention, learning, decision making, communication, wellbeing, and sleep.
Maes is the editor of four books, and is an editorial board member and reviewer for numerous professional journals and conferences. She has received several awards: Netguru selected her for "Hidden Heroes: the people who shaped technology (2022), Time Magazine has included several of her designs in its annual list of inventions of the year; AAAI gave her the "classic paper 2012" prize, awarded to the most influential AI paper of the year, Fast Company named her one of 50 most influential designers (2011); Newsweek picked her as one of the "100 Americans to watch for" in the year 2000; TIME Digital selected her as a member of the “Cyber Elite,” the top 50 technological pioneers of the high-tech world; the World Economic Forum honored her with the title "Global Leader for Tomorrow"; Ars Electronica awarded her the 1995 World Wide Web category prize; and in 2000 she was recognized with the "Lifetime Achievement Award" by the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council. She also received honorary doctorates from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and Open Universiteit, Netherlands, and has given several TED talks.
In addition to her academic endeavors, Maes has been an active entrepreneur as co-founder of several venture-backed companies, including Firefly Networks (sold to Microsoft), Open Ratings (sold to Dun & Bradstreet) and Tulip Co (privately held). She is an advisor to several early stage companies, including Earable, Inc, and Spatial, Inc. Prior to joining the Media Lab, Maes was a visiting professor and a research scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.
While Artificial Intelligence studies how intelligent decision making can be produced by machines, Extended Intelligence instead focuses on how people, augmented with smart technologies, may achieve optimal performance and well-being. These augmentations allow for cognitive enhancements via wearables to amplify and assist with things like memory, attention, decision-making, learning, and communication. Pattie Maes will present her work on these smart systems that can closely integrate with people to support their behavior and decision making.
Magda Schoeneich is the Head of Center for Scientific Leadership and Innovation (CSLI), at Takeda R&D. In her role, she leads the team responsible for imagining and prototyping the future and preparing Takeda's R&D organization for success as we enter the next frontier of health(care/delivery).
Jeff is a senior consulting partner with extensive experience in global and growth markets and has led practices in the US, India, Russia, Europe, Israel and Africa. He leads the US Consulting Future of Work practice, is the founding and US lead partner for the US-Israel Innovation Tech Terminal, now part of Deloitte Catalyst | Tel Aviv, a bridge connecting US and global companies with Israeli start-ups, and is a global editor of Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report, one of the world’s leading annual reports on the future of the workforce, organizations and HR, which he founded in 2011. He has graduate degrees from the Yale School of Management (MBA) and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (MPA). He has authored and contributed to more than 40 articles for the Deloitte Review, the Sloan Management Review (at MIT), the Rotman Management Review (at the University of Toronto), Wired Magazine and the Wall Street Journal.
Director, Community Biotechnology Initiative MIT Media Lab
David Sun Kong is a Synthetic Biologist, community organizer, musician, and photographer based in Lexington, MA. He is the Director of the MIT Media Lab's new Community Biotechnology Initiative. Our mission: empowering communities through biotechnology.
David is a pioneer in developing "lab-on-a-chip" technologies for synthetic biology and a leader in the global community biology movement. He conducted his graduate studies at MIT’s Media Lab, receiving a Master's degree for developing technology for printing nanostructures with energetic beams and a Ph.D. for demonstrating the first gene synthesis in a microfluidic (“lab-on-a-chip”) system. He was recognized as an emerging leader in synthetic biology as a "LEAP" fellow, served as a guest faculty member at the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, MA, and is co-founder and managing faculty of "How To Grow (Almost) Anything, an international course on synthetic biology. He founded and chaired new Microfluidic and Hardware Tracks for the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition (iGEM) and is the official iGEM DJ. He was Technical Staff in the Bioengineering Systems & Technologies group at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and a founding member of the synthetic biology team. He is also the founder of Metafluidics, an open repository for fluidic systems.
He has also worked as a community organizer for more than a decade and is the founder and director of EMW, an art, technology, and community space in Cambridge, MA. EMW's mission is to empower communities through the transformative power of artistic expression. We emphasize serving marginalized communities and develop all of our programming with values rooted in social justice. Our community programs explore expressive forms ranging from poetry to electronic music, beatboxing to bio-hacking and more.
David has performed as a DJ, beat-boxer, vocalist, and rapper at hundreds of venues, including South by Southwest, the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and Brooklyn Bowl, where he opened for Tonight Show band-leader and hip hop legend Questlove. He is also an award-winning vocal arranger and producer. His photography has been exhibited at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, the Japanese American National Museum, and other museums and galleries across the country.
MIT’s Collective Intelligence Design Lab (CIDL) helps groups design innovative new kinds of collectively intelligent systems (superminds) to solve important problems. This panel will bring together leaders from the organizations affiliated with the CIDL to describe their experience with the process.
Moderated by Thomas Malone, Founding Director of the Center for Collective Intelligence, the panel includes representatives from Deloitte, Takeda, and MIT.
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.
Director, MIT.nano, Fariborz Maseeh (1990) Professor of Emerging Technology, MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
Vladimir Bulović is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holding the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology. He directs the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory, co-leads the MIT-Eni Solar Frontiers Center, leads the Tata GridEdge program, and is the Founding Director of MIT.nano, MIT's new 200,000 sqft nano-fabrication, nano-characterization, and prototyping facility. He is an author of over 250 research articles (cited over 50,000 times and recognized as the top 1% of the most highly cited in the Web of Science). He is an inventor of over 100 U.S. patents in areas of light emitting diodes, lasers, photovoltaics, photodetectors, chemical sensors, programmable memories, and micro-electro machines, majority of which have been licensed and utilized by both start-up and multinational companies. The three start-up companies Bulović co-founded jointly employ over 350 people, and include Ubiquitous Energy, Inc., developing nanostructured solar technologies, Kateeva, Inc., focused on development of printed electronics, and QD Vision, Inc. (acquired in 2016) that produced quantum dot optoelectronic components. Products of these companies have been used by millions. Bulović was the first Associate Dean for Innovation of the School of Engineering and the Inaugural co-Director of MIT’s Innovation Initiative, which he co-led from 2013 to 2018. For his passion for teaching Bulović has been recognized with the MacVicar Fellowship, MIT’s highest teaching honor. He completed his Electrical Engineering B.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton University.
Vladimir Bulovic will provide an overview role of MIT.nano in supporting research, innovation, and corporate engagement in the area of Human and Technology Collaboration.
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 is a community of over 1,800 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 260 member companies.
MIT Startup Exchange and ILP are integrated programs of MIT Corporate Relations.
Drew Weibel is the CTO of FGC Plasma Solutions, a Boston-based cleantech start-up, and a visiting research scientist at MIT. Weibel graduated with an SM from the MIT Lab for Aviation and the Environment in 2018 and continues pursuing his passion of reducing the environmental impacts of the aerospace and energy industries, by developing tough tech solutions which can significantly reduce fuel consumption.
Arjun Chandar is the founder and CEO of IndustrialML, a startup finishing seed stage investment to grow its industrial software platform to optimize factory productivity through machine learning. He holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Caltech and an MEng in advanced manufacturing from MIT. Chandar was an operations engineer for production and supply chains at Waters and Meggitt, and Director of Operations and NVLabs at NVBOTS/Cincinnati Incorporated, where he led the company's data science research and developed IP in machine learning for additive manufacturing. Chandar is also a presidential fellow in mechanical engineering at MIT, where he has helped build the Industry 4.0 curriculum. He studies the proliferation of smart manufacturing within industrial organizations and how workforces, particularly at small and medium-sized enterprises, can be better trained and incentivized to adopt these techniques.
Peter Howard has a particular passion and interest in business formation and the process of creating order and value out of formative chaos. His roles have included entrepreneur-CEO, investor, and board director. As CEO, Howard has founded and successfully grown five companies, leading two to IPOs, one to strategic sale, and another to major technology license.
Howard led Realtime Robotics in raising $11.7m in funding, landing contracts with global 100 firms and developing the product from initial drawings to commercial. He has also been integral in the creation and launch of hundreds of innovative products as an industry leader in outsourced R&D and manufacturing services businesses based in the US, Japan, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, and China. Howard holds an MS degree from MIT in management and a Professional Director Certification from the American College of Corporate Directors.
- FGC Plasma: Better combustion for energy, aerospace, and national security - Augmental Technologies: Teeth & tongue gestures for seamless hands-free interaction - IndustrialML: Factory productivity through machine learning - Realtime Robotics: Accelerated and continuous collision-free motion planning
Mohamed Saad Ibn Seddik, Dr.Eng, founded blkSAIL to make fleet of autonomous merchant marine ships a reality. He has more than nine years of experience in Marine Autonomy, and has made eight marine vehicles fully autonomous so far. He is passionate about marine autonomy and his vision is to make the maritime industry safer, better, stronger.
Dr. Bernie Malouin is the founder and CEO of JETCOOL Technologies. Previously, Dr. Malouin spent 8 years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he served as Chief Engineer on a $100M airborne hardware program. He was also the Principal Investigator on a $1.2M research and development project on cooling high power electronics, and has 13 years of experience in liquid cooling of electronics. Dr. Malouin holds a PhD in mechanical engineering and a BS in aeronautical engineering, both from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. You may also find him fixing a tractor, flying an airplane, or bicycling a rail trail.
Dr. Cyrus Shaoul graduated from MIT in 1993 with a BSc in brain and cognitive science, and then went on to co-found a software company in Japan called Digital Garage, where he was the CTO. In 2004, he began studying cognitive science again and received a PhD from the University of Alberta. In 2017, Dr. Shaoul left academia to co-found Leela AI with Henry Minsky (MIT AI Lab) and Milan Minsky (MIT LCS). Dr. Shaoul has published papers in the areas of computational modeling of language acquisition and semantic processing. He has also shared widely adopted open-source versions of his computational models and mega-corpora.
Ramon Gonzalez is an authority on robotics and engineering whose skills have been demonstrated in some of the most important engineering centers in the world including a 3-year research position at the MIT Robotic Mobility Group. He has received several awards including the Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain. He holds a PhD in robotics and an engineering degree in computer science by the University of Almeria (Spain) and a certificate in accounting and finance by the Imperial College Business School (UK).
- blkSAIL: Marine autonomy as a service - JETCOOL: Cooling for high power electronics - Leela AI: Enabling robots to operate autonomously in unpredictable environments - robonity: Applied planetary robotics & AI for smarter agriculture
Additional Exhibiting Startups: - RightHand Robotics: Robots for piece-picking and packaging - Top Flight Technologies: Heavy lift, long range hybrid-electric UAVs - Nara Logics: AI for product recommendation and decision support
Professor John E. Fernández is a professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT, affiliated with the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and a practicing architect. Fernández is also Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Environmental Solutions Initiative, enlisting the capacity of the MIT community in the transition to a net zero carbon, biodiverse and equitable future.
Fernández founded and currently directs the MIT Urban Metabolism Group and is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Commission on BiodiverCities by 2030, the Urban Climate Change Research Network, and the Leadership Team of Oceanvisions. He has published on a wide range of subjects, from sustainable cities, urban biodiversity, design, and more, and is the author of two books and numerous articles in scientific and design journals, including Science, the Journal of Industrial Ecology, Building and Environment, Energy Policy and others, and author of nine book chapters. He is formerly Chair of Sustainable Urban Systems for the International Society of Industrial Ecology and Director of the MIT Building Technology Program from 2010 to 2015.
The MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative was founded in 2014 and charged by MIT President L. Rafael Reif with leading the Institute’s “drive to increase fundamental knowledge and accelerate progress towards solutions around environment, climate, and human society.” Director Fernandez will describe the work of the ESI and highlight the ways in which industry plays a critical role in a productive, sustainable and humane future for people and the planet.
Desirée Plata’s research seeks to maximize technology’s benefit to society while minimizing environmental impacts in industrially important practices through the use of geochemical tools and chemical mechanistic insights. Plata earned her doctoral degree in Chemical Oceanography and Environmental Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Joint Program in Oceanography (2009) and her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Union College in Schenectady, NY (2003). Plata is an NSF CAREER Awardee (2016), an Odebrecht-Braskem Sustainable Innovation Awardee (2015), a two-time National Academy of Engineers Frontiers of Engineering Fellow (2012, 2020), a two-time National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow (2011, 2013), a Caltech Resnick Sustainability Fellow (2017), and winner of MIT’s Junior Bose Teaching Award (2019),Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award (2021), and Perkins Graduate Advising Award (2021). Having previously served as John J. Lee Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University and Associate Director for Research at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale, Plata is now Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, co-director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, and Faculty Lead of Belonging, Achievement, and Composition in the MIT School of Engineering. Plata directs MIT’s Methane Network, serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Spark Climate, and served on the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine’s Atmospheric Methane Removal study (recused).Plata is co-founder of Nth Cycle(nthcycle.com), co-founder and President of Sustainable Chemical Resource Advisors LLC, and co-founder and President of Moxair Inc.
Delayed optimization of environmental metrics in material design and industrial practice can lead to costly redesign and remediation needs. Higher-throughput environmental assessment tools and predictive strategies may help guide design for more economically and environmentally sustainable industrial process and practices. Plata will discuss specific examples from oil and gas development, nanomaterial synthesis, and recent efforts in improved polymers and plastics for environmental compatibility.
Jessika Trancik is a Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research examines the dynamic costs, performance, and environmental impacts of energy systems to inform climate policy and accelerate beneficial and equitable technology innovation. Her projects focus on all energy services including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. This work spans solar energy, wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission among other technologies. Prof. Trancik received her B.S. from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and was formerly at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and at WSP International/UNOPS (now Interpeace) in Geneva.
In this talk, I will quantify the energy storage requirements of various electrification and decarbonization scenarios. Through solving data-informed optimization models, key technological innovation opportunities will be revealed, spanning hardware, software, and business models.
PhD Candidate, Polymers and Soft Matter Program MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Ty Christoff-Tempesta is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Program in Polymers and Soft Matter at MIT working with Professor Julia Ortony. With the support of the Martin Fellowship, Ty works towards creating rationally designed nanoscale fibers for environmental sustainability. These novel materials are based on assemblies of molecules bound by nonpermanent interactions which can be recycled through triggered assembly and disassembly. Ty considers water-processability, scalability, and environmental impact as key elements in designing and testing these new materials.
Ty holds a Bachelor of Science in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida and has received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the H.F. Taylor Fellowship, and the Lemelson-Vest Award. Ty enjoys competing in sustainability challenges, including in this year’s MADMEC materials design challenge and as a Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Patagonia Case Competition on sustainability in business. In his free time, Ty enjoys rock climbing, skiing, frisbee, and discovering other new ways to wear out his knees.
An increasing body of evidence demonstrates that there is a direct correlation between global warming and the release of heavy metals into drinking and crop water supplies, and water security remains a pressing sustainability challenge in developing nations. We present a pathway to obtain ultra-stable nanofibers assembled from small molecules in water which rival the mechanical properties of nature's stiffest materials. We then decorate the surface of these nanofibers with efficient heavy metal chelators and demonstrate orders of magnitude improvement over macroscopic alternatives in use today, offering a way to miniaturize water treatment while overcoming several complications of existing strategies.
PhD Candidate, Climate Science Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department at MIT
Megan is a fifth-year PhD student in the Climate Science program working with advisor Susan Solomon in the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department at MIT. She studies the processes, timing, uncertainty, and impacts of modern-day climate change. Her research makes use of statistical methods to evaluate large ensembles of climate models and observational measurements. One of her focuses is on the global water cycle and its impacts on humanity. In this domain she has focused on how changes in aridity coincide with human populations, the relationship between sea surface temperature and rainfall in southern Africa under climate change, and employing Bayesian methods to evaluate climate models for optimal decision making for water infrastructure in an uncertain future.
Apart from her research, Megan has spent time living in the Democratic Republic of Congo teaching math courses at the Catholic University of Bukavu. She has also consulted for the World Bank in Uganda, contributing to a climate change impacts report and strategy plan. Megan spent four years as a research associate at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and completed her Master’s in the Technology and Policy Program at MIT in 2012.
A goal of the Paris Agreement is to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. If this were achieved, global warming would slow to a rate significantly lower than 21st century warming rates, but little is known about how this would occur over time and across geographies. This work investigates this geographic variability and provides the first framework for estimating the end of rapid, anthropogenic warming.
Assistant Professor of Design Research Co-Director and founder, Self-Assembly Lab Founder & Principal, SJET LLC MIT Department of Architecture
Skylar Tibbits is a co-director and founder of the Self-Assembly Lab housed at MIT’s International Design Center. The Self-Assembly Lab focuses on self-assembly and programmable material technologies for novel manufacturing, products and construction processes.
Skylar is an Assistant Professor of Design Research in the Department of Architecture where he teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios and How to Make (Almost) Anything, a seminar at MIT's Media Lab with Neil Gershenfeld. Skylar was recently named R&D Magazine's 2015 Innovator of the Year, 2015 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, 2014 Inaugural WIRED Fellow, 2014 Gifted Citizen, 2013 Fast Company Innovation by Design Award, 2013 Architectural League Prize, The Next Idea Award at Ars Electronica 2013, Visionary Innovation Award at the Manufacturing Leadership Summit, 2012 TED Senior Fellow and was named a Revolutionary Mind in SEED Magazine’s 2008 Design Issue.
Previously, he has worked at a number of renowned design offices including: Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture and Point b Design. He has designed and built large-scale installations at galleries around the world, has been published extensively in outlets such as the New York Times, Wired, Nature, Fast Company as well as various peer-reviewed journals and books.
Skylar has a Professional Degree in Architecture and minor in experimental computation from Philadelphia University. Continuing his education at MIT, he received a Master of Science in Design Computation and a Master of Science in Computer Science under the guidance of; Patrick Winston, Terry Knight, Erik Demaine and Neil Gershenfeld.
Initiated in 2007, Skylar Tibbits is also the founder and principal of a multidisciplinary design practice, SJET LLC.
Marty Culpepper, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is MIT’s first Maker Czar. He leads MIT’s effort to upgrade legacy spaces/equipment, introduce new technologies, create new campus makerspaces, foster maker communities, and collaborate with peer universities, alumni, government, and industry. Professor Culpepper is the recipient of an NSF Presidential Early Career Award, two R&D 100 awards, a TR100 award, and a Joel and Ruth Spira Teaching Award. His areas of expertise are in Precision Engineering, Manufacturing, and Thermo/Fluid system design.
He is a self-described gear head who loves working on his Ducati and Mustang, but not as much as riding/driving them. He loves building things at MIT and at home in his own shop. His favorite maker tools are mills and waterjets, though he’s become fond of glass blowing.
Several decades back, the hands-on capstone course was a step change for technology education. It started at schools like MIT and spread worldwide. We now expect students have some experience in "thinking + doing," in fact, it is often necessary for university accreditation.
We are in the midst of an impending step change, and again, schools like MIT are in competition to lead this change. It has led to an "arms race" in higher education that will shape the future people that work with/for you. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent by universities in a competition to create innovation ecosystems that produce technology innovators that have making + innovation skill sets.
You're going to want to know about these people, who is best at educating/creating them, and how to gain a competitive advantage in hiring them. In this talk, I'm going to help you figure that out.
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems Editor-in-Chief of the journal Systems Engineering Executive Director, MIT Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE) Study Co-Director, Center for Complex Engineering Systems at KACST and MIT Secretary and Treasurer, Council of Engineering Systems Universities (CESUN)
Prof. de Weck is an international leader in Systems Engineering research. He focuses on how complex man-made systems such as aircraft, spacecraft, automobiles, printers and critical infrastructures are designed, manufactured and operated and how they evolve over time. His main emphasis is on the strategic properties of these systems that have the potential to maximize lifecycle value. His group has developed quantitative methods and tools that explicitly consider manufacturability, flexibility, robustness, and sustainability among other characteristics. Significant results include the Adaptive Weighted Sum (AWS) method for resolving tradeoffs amongst competing objectives, the Delta-Design Structure Matrix (DDSM) for technology infusion analysis, Time-Expanded Decision Networks (TDN) and the SpaceNet and HabNet simulation environments. These methods have impacted complex systems in space exploration (NASA, JPL), oil and gas exploration (BP) as well as sophisticated electro-mechanical products (e.g. Xerox, Pratt & Whitney, GM, DARPA). He has authored two books and about 250 peer-reviewed papers to date. He is a Fellow of INCOSE and an Associate Fellow of AIAA. Since January 2013 he serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Systems Engineering. In 2006 he received the Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising followed by the 2010 Marion MacDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising and a 2012 AIAA Teaching Award. From 2008-2011 he served as Associate Director of the Engineering Systems Division (ESD) at MIT. From 2011 to 2013 he served as Executive Director of the MIT Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE) project.
This presentation will present a new state of the art framework for technology roadmapping based on a similar approach implemented at Airbus from 2016-2018 and demonstrated using the example of stratospheric solar-powered electric aircraft. The framework includes four steps beginning with a quantitative assessment of the current state of technology and competitive analysis and concludes with a risk-optimized R&D portfolio with specific Figure-of-Merit (FOM) based targets. The presentation will summarize the 17 technologies for which roadmaps are being developed in Fall 2019 as part of MIT’s new graduate class 16.887/EM.427 on Technology Roadmapping and Development.
Associate Professor Director, Computation Group
Larry Sass architectural designer who conducts research in design studies, computing and digital delivery of buildings directly from computers models. His research publications demonstrate new ways to incorporates digital design and fabrication into the production of small wood-framed houses. He is currently working on software systems that support rapid fabrication of buildings across all materials, styles and scales. He has exhibited his work at the Modern Museum of Art in New York City and publishes widely in many journals and conferences. Currently he is an associate professor of architecture, he has also taught at Singapore University of Design and Technology.
Construction Tech is one of the fastest growing areas of venture capital funding in the US. With over three billion in investments over the past year it is clear that Construction Tech will soon impact the ways we deliver building of all sizes. Moving forward we need new, rich ideas in software development to solve many of the building industries toughest problems. The talk will present a framework for home delivery directly from computers. Larry will show how builders will design and construct buildings from digital files using systems similar to 3D Printing.
Advances in technology are revolutionizing the ways we sense what is happening in our own minds and bodies, and by extension how humans and machines interact, individually and in groups. Researchers across MIT are at the forefront of this revolution. In this session we’ll show you a few of the latest developments.
Research Assistant Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT Media Lab
Arnav is a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab. His research interests span machine learning, systems and computational neuroscience, and physics. His current research investigates both artificial and biological intelligence, and how these could be complementary and coupled. Arnav’s work has had widespread coverage in media outlets including CBS 60 Minutes, Smithsonian, MIT Tech Review, New Scientist, The Guardian and Forbes amongst other venues. He is a recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Graduate Prize, Fast Company Innovation by Design Award, World Technology Award, Disrupt 100, FF Rising Star Award amongst other recognitions. Arnav has also had art installations exhibited at Tate Modern, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Design Museum, alt-AI, QUT Brisbane amongst other venues.
We are currently at an inflection point as artificially intelligent (AI) systems gain capabilities to handle complex tasks in various domains. In this talk, I discuss how machine intelligence could be a direct and complementary extension of human intelligence. I investigate how computing, artificially intelligent systems, and the internet could be directly coupled with the human experience to augment and extend human cognition and abilities. The talk presents recent work on the AlterEgo system, a peripheral neural interface that enables people to silently and internally converse with machines — without voice and discernible movements, and discusses how the human-computer interface can for the first time become endogenous to the human user, changing our relationship with computing and thereby enabling people in different ways. Through the lens of extended computing, I discuss our work investigating AI systems functioning as complements to human cognitive abilities in pursuits as diverse as gene sequencing to human self-expression.
Dr. Michael J. Cima is the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering, co-director of MIT's Innovation Initiative and Associate Dean of Innovation for the School of Engineering. He also holds the David H. Koch Chair of Engineering at MIT.
Prof. Cima was the recipient of the W. David Kingery Award in 2019, was elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2016 and the National Academy of Engineering in 2011. He is faculty director of the Lemelson-MIT Program which inspires youth to be inventive and
Michael is author or co-author of over 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications and 80 US patents, and is a recognized expert in materials processing. He is the co-inventor of MIT’s three-dimensional printing process.
Prof. Cima has extensive entrepreneurial experience. He co-founded SpringLeaf Therapeutics, a specialty pharmaceutical company, Taris Biomedical, a urology products company acquired by Johnson & Johnson, MicroChips Inc., a developer of microelectronic based drug delivery and diagnostic systems and T2 Biosystems, a medical diagnostics company for which he also serves as director.
Medical technologies are evolving at a very rapid pace. Portable communications devices and other handheld electronics are influencing our expectations of future medical tools. The advanced medical technologies of our future will not necessarily be large expensive systems. They are just as likely to be small and disposable. This talk will review how microsystems and microdevices are already impacting health care as commercial products or in clinical development. Adoption of new technologies depends greatly on compatibility with existing clinical practice. Microsystems that are rapidly adopted fulfill significant medical needs and fit seamlessly with existing procedures. My group has been focusing on studying individual medical procedures and trying to make them do things never before thought possible or dramatically reduce morbidity associated with that procedure. Several examples will be described including noninvasive ways of determining hydration status, measuring local hypoxia in tumors, measuring tumor response to targeted therapy, and longitudinal measurements of biomarkers.
Umberto Fugiglando is a Research Manager at the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a multidisciplinary research group that studies the interface between cities, people, and technologies. He has been leading and managing multi-stakeholder research projects on data science applied to urban technology initiatives, and he is in charge of developing and maintaining partnerships between cities, companies, and foundations that support the group's research agenda. Additionally, Umberto is co-founder of ReFuse, a social enterprise that aims at improving the well-being of communities exposed to waste hazards. Umberto’s background is in Applied Mathematics and Engineering, and he has studied in Italy, Sweden, Canada, and the US.
The real-time city is now real! The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is opening a new approach to the study of the built environment. Digital technologies are radically changing the way we understand, design, and ultimately live cities. This is having an impact at different scales – from the single building to the scale of the metropolis. On the occasion of the MIT R&D conference, Umberto Fugiglando will address these issues from a critical point of view through projects by the Senseable City Laboratory, a research initiative at MIT. In particular, he will show research advances and use cases of sparse and crowdsourced sensing technologies for addressing issues in air quality measurements, infrastructure monitoring and wastewater sampling.
Research Assistant, Responsive Environments MIT Media Lab
Don Derek Haddad is a PhD student in Media Arts and Sciences at the Responsive Environment Group lead by Prof. Joe Paradiso. He conducted a series of interdisciplinary research combining sensor data visualization within immersive virtual environments as part of his Masters thesis at the Media Lab titled Resynthesizing Reality. Don’s broader interest in human-computer interaction extends to fields of wearable computing, ambient technologies, smart textiles and fashion through his collaborative effort and contribution to the SensorKnits project. SensorKnits packages low-level knitting processes with material sciences to massively manufacture sensors that can deeply integrate within fabrics. Moreover, Don is an electronic music improviser and inventor of award winning electronic music instruments featured in several conferences, including the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference, and the Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference.
Ph.D. Candidate, Responsive Environments Group MIT Media Lab
David Ramsay spent three years as a full-time System Engineer with Bose Corporation before joining the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Lab. Since then he’s traveled to Shenzhen twice to study hardware manufacturing and research that can scale; he’s also spent two summers at Google working on computationally manageable deep learning models for embedded applications. His research looks to combine probabilistic modeling techniques with ubiquitous hardware to study deep, effortless attention and the systems that facilitate them.
Ph.D. Candidate, Responsive Environments MIT Media Lab
Brian Mayton is a Ph.D. student in the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Lab. He designs and deploys large-scale sensor networks in restored wetlands, combining wireless low-power environmental and soil sensing with live audio and video, with all data available in real time and archived in a database now extending over five years. His work explores the ways that these sensor networks can be used both to further the practice of wetland restoration and to create new ways for people to experience and learn about these fascinating sites.
At MIT's Media Lab, Professor Joe Paradiso's Responsive Environments group explores how sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction, and perception, while developing new sensing modalities and enabling technologies that create new forms of interactive experience and expression. This work is highlighted in diverse application areas, which have included automotive systems, smart highways, medical instrumentation, RFID, wearable computing, and interactive media. In this talk, we will provide an overview of that work and thoughts on future directions.
Jonathan P. How is the Richard C. Maclaurin Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto in 1987, and his S.M. and Ph.D. from MIT in 1990 and 1993, respectively. Prior to joining MIT in 2000, he was an assistant professor at Stanford University. He was the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine (2015-19) and was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control System Society in 2019. His research focuses on robust planning and learning under uncertainty, with an emphasis on multiagent systems. He is a Fellow of IEEE and AIAA and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2021.
Our work addresses the planning, control, and mapping issues for autonomous robot teams that operate in challenging, partially observable, dynamic environments with limited field-of-view sensors. In such scenarios, individual robots need to be able to plan/execute safe paths on short timescales to avoid imminent collisions. Performance can be improved by planning beyond the robots’ immediate sensing horizon using high-level semantic descriptions of the environment. For mapping on longer timescales, the agents must also be able to align and fuse imperfect and partial observations to construct a consistent and unified representation of the environment. Furthermore, these tasks must be done autonomously onboard, which typically adds significant complexity to the system. This talk will highlight three recently developed solutions to these challenges that have been implemented to (1) robustly plan paths and demonstrate high-speed agile flight of a quadrotor in unknown, cluttered environments; and (2) plan beyond the line-of-sight by utilizing the learned context within the local vicinity, with applications in last-mile delivery. We further present a multi-way data association algorithm to correctly synchronize partial and noisy representations and fuse maps acquired by (single or multiple) robots, showcased on a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) application.
Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Luca Carlone is the Charles Stark Draper Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Principal Investigator in the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS). He received his PhD from the Polytechnic University of Turin in 2012. He joined LIDS as a postdoctoral associate (2015) and later as a Research Scientist (2016), after spending two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology (2013-2015). His research interests include nonlinear estimation, numerical and distributed optimization, and probabilistic inference, applied to sensing, perception, and decision-making in single and multi-robot systems. His work includes seminal results on certifiably correct algorithms for localization and mapping, as well as approaches for visual-inertial navigation and distributed mapping. He is a recipient of the 2017 Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award, the best paper award at WAFR '16, the best Student paper award at the 2018 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, and was best paper finalist at RSS '15.
Spatial perception has witnessed an unprecedented progress in the last decade. Robots are now able to detect objects, localize them, and create large-scale maps of an unknown environment, which are crucial capabilities for navigation and manipulation. Despite these advances, both researchers and practitioners are well aware of the brittleness of current perception systems, and a large gap still separates robot and human perception. While many applications can afford occasional failures (e.g., AR/VR, domestic robotics) or can structure the environment to simplify perception (e.g., industrial robotics), safety-critical applications of robotics in the wild, ranging from self-driving vehicles to search & rescue, demand a new generation of algorithms. This talk discusses two efforts targeted at bridging this gap. The first focuses on robustness: I present recent advances in the design of certifiably robust spatial perception algorithms that are robust to extreme amounts of outliers and afford performance guarantees. These algorithms are “hard to break” and are able to work in regimes where all related techniques fail. The second effort targets metric-semantic understanding. While humans are able to quickly grasp both geometric and semantic aspects of a scene, high-level scene understanding remains a challenge for robotics. I present recent work on real-time metric-semantic understanding, which combines robust estimation with deep learning. I discuss these efforts and their applications to a variety of perception problems, including mesh registration, image-based object localization, and robot Simultaneous Localization and Mapping.
Julie Shah is the H.N. Slater Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and leads the Interactive Robotics Group of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Shah received her SB (2004) and SM (2006) from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, and her PhD (2010) in Autonomous Systems from MIT. Before joining the faculty, she worked at Boeing Research and Technology on robotics applications for aerospace manufacturing. She has developed innovative methods for enabling fluid human-robot teamwork in time-critical, safety-critical domains, ranging from manufacturing to surgery to space exploration. Her group draws on expertise in artificial intelligence, human factors, and systems engineering to develop interactive robots that emulate the qualities of effective human team members to improve the efficiency of human-robot teamwork. In 2014, Shah was recognized with an NSF CAREER award for her work on “Human-aware Autonomy for Team-oriented Environments," and by the MIT Technology Review TR35 list as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35. Her work on industrial human-robot collaboration was also recognized by the Technology Review as one of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2013, and she has received international recognition in the form of best paper awards and nominations from the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, the International Symposium on Robotics, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
Every team has top performers — people who excel at working in a team to find the right solutions in complex, difficult situations. These top performers include nurses who run hospital floors, emergency response teams, air traffic controllers, and factory line supervisors. While they may outperform the most sophisticated optimization and scheduling algorithms, they cannot often tell us how they do it. Similarly, even when a machine can do the job better than most of us, it can’t explain how. In this talk I share recent work investigating effective ways to blend the unique decision-making strengths of humans and machines. I discuss the development of computational models that enable machines to efficiently infer the mental state of human teammates and thereby collaborate with people in richer, more flexible ways. Our studies demonstrate statistically significant improvements in people’s performance on military, healthcare and manufacturing tasks, when aided by intelligent machine teammates.
Assistant Professor MIT School of Engineering
Pulkit is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and co-founded SafelyYou Inc. His research interests span robotics, deep learning, computer vision, and computational neuroscience. Pulkit completed his bachelor's from IIT Kanpur and was awarded the Director’s Gold Medal. His work has appeared multiple times in MIT Tech Review, Quanta, New Scientist, NYPost, etc. He is a recipient of Signatures Fellow Award, Fulbright Science and Technology Award, Goldman Sachs Global Leadership Award, OPJEMS and Sridhar Memorial Prize among others. Pulkit holds a “Sangeet Prabhakar” (equivalent to bachelors in Indian classical music) and occasionally performs in music concerts.
An open question in artificial intelligence is how to endow agents with common sense knowledge that humans naturally seem to possess. A prominent theory in child development posits that human infants gradually acquire such knowledge through the process of experimentation. According to this theory, even the seemingly frivolous play of infants is a mechanism for them to conduct experiments to learn about their environment. Inspired by this view of biological sensorimotor learning, I will present my work on building artificial agents that use the paradigm of experimentation to explore and condense their experience into models that enable them to solve new problems. I will discuss the effectiveness of my approach and open issues using case studies of a robot learning to push objects, manipulate ropes, finding its way in office environments and an agent learning to play video games merely based on the incentive of conducting experiments.
Marc Carrel-Billiard is the Global Senior Managing Director of Accenture Labs, the company's dedicated R&D organization. In his role, he also directs Accenture’s annual Technology Vision research, which looks at the future of enterprise technology.
Marc has been with Accenture for nearly 20 years and has worked across all the five industries we serve. Before taking on leadership of Technology R&D, Marc was the global lead for Emerging Technology in Accenture. He has held several global leadership roles within Accenture’s technology group, including within Application Portfolio Optimization and SOA/Integration Architecture. He has worked across several cutting-edge areas of IT including voice recognition, knowledge-based systems and neural networks.
Marc is one of a select group of Accenture certified Master Technology Architects, and is also a Solution Architect and Select Quality Assurance director. He has broad software engineering and delivery experience, particularly in areas such as component and object-oriented technologies.
Before joining Accenture in 1998, Marc was part of IBM Global Services where he published several articles and books on C++ and Java programming with Prentice Hall. Marc currently is based in Accenture’s Labs in Sophia Antipolis, France. He lives in Vence, France with his wife and his passions include photography and hiking.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to radically reshape business and society, and transform the way we work and live -- unlike anything we’ve seen since the Industrial Revolution. Businesses that understand how to harness AI can surge ahead. Those that neglect it will fall behind. Based on research gathered from 1,500 organizations revealed in the book Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI, this talk will shed light into key research that is needed, how organizations are deploying AI to work with humans in fundamentally new ways, and how the “Missing Middle” is the secret to humans powerfully harnessing the opportunity and the promise of AI for greater good.
Federico is Executive Vice President of Design at Samsung Electronics. He heads the Samsung Design Innovation Center (SDIC) in San Francisco CA Next-Generation Experience Planning Team in Seoul and Experience and Insights teams within Samsung Research. Federico leads global multidisciplinary teams in the USA Asia and Europe to design new generation of experiences and envision future products. As a designer innovator and social scientist he focuses on the impact of networked digital technologies on human behavior and society and designs products services and meaningful experiences to improves people’s lives. Before joining Samsung Federico was an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teaching at MIT and MIT Media Lab. He also founded and directed the MIT Design Lab and the MIT Mobile Experience Lab. He previously worked at Motorola Inc. and Philips Design envisioning and creating innovative product experiences. He has been awarded honorary professorships at the Glasgow School of Art University of Glasgow and the Jiangnan University School of Design in Wuxi China. He has published several scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals along with books and articles and he has won several awards for his design and innovation work. Federico earned the PhD degree in Sociology of Culture and Communication from the Sorbonne University Paris V with a focus on mediated communication and social interaction in networked communities and smart cities.
In an era when AI, IoT and machine driven optimization increase system performances and task based processes, the fundamental question is to understand how we can design systems and services for humans rather than design human behaviors for machine optimization.
Trough the critical analysis of ongoing technological developments and MIT Design Lab research projects, we will discuss how experience driven, human centered, design can play a distinctive role in our contemporary societies.
David Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, the director of the Applied Cooperation Team, and an affiliate of the MIT Institute of Data, Systems, and Society, and the Initiative on the Digital Economy. Bridging the fields of cognitive science, behavioral economics, and social psychology, David’s research combines behavioral experiments run online and in the field with mathematical and computational models to understand people’s attitudes, beliefs, and choices. His work uses a cognitive science perspective grounded in the tension between more intuitive versus deliberative modes of decision-making. He focuses on illuminating why people believe and share misinformation and “fake news,” understanding political psychology and polarization, and promoting human cooperation. David received his BA in computational biology from Cornell University in 2004 and his PhD in systems biology from Harvard University in 2009, was a post-doctoral researcher in Harvard University’s Department of Psychology from 2009 to 2013, and was an Assistant and then Associate Professor (with tenure) of Psychology, Economics, and Management at Yale University prior to joining the faculty at MIT.
Why do people believe and share misinformation, including entirely fabricated news headlines (“fake news”) and biased or misleading coverage of actual events ("hyper-partisan" content)? The dominant narrative in the media and among academics is that we believe misinformation because we want to – that is, we engage in motivated reasoning, using our cognitive capacities to convince ourselves of the truth of statements that align with our political ideology rather than to undercover the truth. In a series of survey experiments using American participants, my colleagues and I challenge this account. We consistently find that engaging in more reasoning makes one better able to identify false or biased headlines - even for headlines that align with individuals’ political ideology. These findings suggest that susceptibility to misinformation is driven more by mental laziness and lack of reasoning than it is by partisan bias hijacking the reasoning process. We then build on this observation to examine interventions to fight the spread of misinformation. We find - given this smaller-than-believed role of partisan bias - that crowdsourcing can actually be a quite effective approach for identifying misleading news outlets and news content. We also demonstrate the power of making the concept of accuracy top-of-mind, thereby increasing the likelihood that people think about the accuracy of headlines before they decide whether to share them online. Our results suggest that reasoning is not held hostage by partisan bias, but that instead our participants do have the ability to tell fake or inaccurate from real - if they bother to pay attention. Our findings also suggest simple, cost-effective behavioral interventions to fight the spread of misinformation.
Professor of Physics MIT Department of Physics
A native of Stockholm, Tegmark left Sweden in 1990 after receiving his B.Sc. in Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology (he’d earned a B.A. in Economics the previous year at the Stockholm School of Economics). His first academic venture beyond Scandinavia brought him to California, where he studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his M.A. in 1992, and Ph.D. in 1994.
After four years of west coast living, Tegmark returned to Europe and accepted an appointment as a research associate with the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Munich. In 1996 he headed back to the U.S. as a Hubble Fellow and member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Tegmark remained in New Jersey for a few years until an opportunity arrived to experience the urban northeast with an Assistant Professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received tenure in 2003.
He extended the east coast experiment and moved north of Philly to the shores of the Charles River (Cambridge-side), arriving at MIT in September 2004. He is married to Meia-Chita Tegmark and has two sons, Philip and Alexander.
Tegmark is an author on more than two hundred technical papers, and has featured in dozens of science documentaries. He has received numerous awards for his research, including a Packard Fellowship (2001-06), Cottrell Scholar Award (2002-07), and an NSF Career grant (2002-07), and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. His work with the SDSS collaboration on galaxy clustering shared the first prize in Science magazine’s "Breakthrough of the Year: 2003."
For more on his research, publications, and students, or his fun articles, goofs, and photo album, please visit Personal home page.
If AI succeeds in eclipsing human general intelligence within decades, as many leading AI researchers predict, then how can we make it the best rather than worst thing ever to happen to humanity? I argue that this will require planning and hard work, and explore challenges that we need to overcome as well as exciting opportunities. How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today’s kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? How can we make machines understand, adopt and retain our goals, and whose goals should should they be? What future do you want? Welcome to the most important conversation of our time!
Chief Technology Ventures Officer, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Bernadette Johnson is the Chief Technology Ventures Officer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, an office established in 2018 to support access to and development of commercial technologies of relevance to national security. Prior to that, she served as the Chief Science Officer of Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx, now DIU), which focuses on accelerating commercial innovation for the Department of Defense. Before joining DIUx in 2016, she was the Chief Technology Officer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Her responsibilities included the development of the Laboratory's long-term technology strategy and the coordination of collaborative research with MIT campus. In prior years, her technical foci were in chemical and biological defense, as well as laser-based remote sensing and adaptive optics. She remains actively involved in technology innovation initiatives. Dr. Johnson holds a BS in physics from Dickinson College, a MS in condensed matter theory from Georgetown University, and a PhD in plasma physics from Dartmouth College. She attended the Harvard Kennedy School’s Senior Executives in National and International Security Program in 2015, and is an active member of the Naval Studies Board.
MIT Lincoln Laboratory is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) operated by MIT for the Department of Defense. Our mission is technology development in support of national security and our R&D activities extend from fundamental investigations through design and field testing of prototype systems. Principal competencies include sensors, information extraction (signal processing and embedded computing), communications, integrated sensing, and decision support. Today’s session will focus on the physiological interfaces and sensory aides, advanced decision-support tools, and novel sensing methodologies.
Technical Staff MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Greg Angelides is a technical staff member of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's AI Software Architecture and Algorithms Group. His research focuses on computer vision algorithms employed in both data and compute resource constrained environments. This includes investigation of deep neural network architecture characteristics, as well as active learning approaches. Prior to his work on machine learning algorithms, Angelides was a systems analyst on the USAF Red Team where he led analyses on electronic attack system capabilities and oversaw development of high fidelity air defense simulation software. He received his BS and BE from Tufts University and an MS in applied mathematics from Northeastern University.
Recent breakthroughs in the field of deep learning mark unprecedented progress toward creating artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Achievements in converting spoken language to text, categorizing images, and formulating strategies in challenging games such as Go demonstrate a versatility and utility in AI applications that stand to substantially transform society. The national security technology landscape will be similarly transformed, but facilitating this transformation introduces new challenges. In this talk, we discuss methods developed under the Computer-on-Watch program that integrate the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence via deep learning with imagery analysis applications. We will explore a prototype system, integrated into a modern DoD software framework, which can successfully identify objects of interest in overhead imagery. We will then review approaches for reducing the data requirements for training deep learning systems. Last, novel research will be presented in automated visual reasoning which lays the groundwork for creating a cognitive assistant that communicates using natural language.
Assistant Group Leader, Homeland Protection & Air Traffic Control, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Ryan J. McKindles joined MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 2015 where he serves as an Assistant Group Leader of the Human Health & Performance Systems group. Additionally, he directs research at the Sensorimotor Technology Realization in Immersive Virtual Environments (STRIVE) Center. Dr. McKindles has diverse research interests that bridge the fields of neuroscience, sensorimotor control, biomechanics, neuroimaging, wearable technologies, and signal processing. Previously, he worked as a Scientific Consultant for Brain Vision in North Carolina. Dr. McKindles received a BS in Biomedical Engineering (2006) from Michigan Technological University and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (2013) from Marquette University.
Technical Staff, Homeland Protection & Air Traffic Control, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Dr. Christopher J. Smalt is a Technical Staff Member in the Human Health & Performance Systems Group at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. His current work focuses on computational auditory neuroscience and phenomenological modeling. Specifically, Dr. Smalt’s research focuses on the mechanisms of hearing damage and the effect of noise and blast exposure on hearing and cognitive performance, as well as rehabilitation strategies. His other research interests include 3D virtual audio, cognitive load, attention decoding, and electrophysiology. Dr. Smalt received a BS degree in Computer Engineering from Clarkson University and earned both MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
The integration of wearable technologies with novel, intelligent algorithms can enhance the physical and cognitive abilities of human operators. This presentation will highlight two unique technologies currently under development at MIT Lincoln Laboratory that augment human performance. First, we will discuss the introduction of adaptive attention decoding algorithms with hearables to enhance the listener’s experience in noisy and complex auditory environments. Second, we will show initial advancements in the field of human-exoskeleton teaming with a focus on operationalizing the technology for real-world environments. As part of this presentation, we will discuss supervised and unsupervised machine learning approaches on physiological measurements such as electroencephalography (EEG), Electromyography (EMG), and motion capture data. These emerging technologies, which can sense the intent of the user, can be adaptive and have the potential to enhance human performance and aid in recovery after injury.
Technical Staff, Air, Missile, & Maritime Defense Technology, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Reed Jensen is a systems scientist from MIT Lincoln Laboratory with a B.S. in physics from Brigham Young University and an M.S. in electrical engineering and control theory from Northeastern. He has worked at Lincoln in the fields of systems modeling, optimization, and control since 2005. Recently he and his group are developing new methods in automated decision making and human-machine teaming, including research using human-focused data collection with serious games.
Navigating our increasingly complex world often requires efficient interactions between humans and automated systems. Our recent work explores collaboration and co-adaptation of human participants with automated decision-making agents using an instrumented virtual environment. In this talk we demonstrate the ability of a general-purpose reinforcement learning agent to learn beneficial team behaviors that consider a human collaborator's demonstrated preferences without requiring explicit communication. We share both team performance results and subjective trust measures for a resource scheduling problem.
Assistant Staff, Advanced Technology, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Jonah A. Majumder is an assistant staff member in the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems group at MIT-Lincoln Laboratory, where he develops quantum sensors for biomedical, neuroscience, and other precision-sensing applications. His research relies on the detection of magnetic fields with quantum systems in a diamond, namely the nitrogen-vacancy color center. Mr. Majumder joined Lincoln Laboratory after graduating from Yale University. With a focus in experimental atomic and molecular optics, he worked on a team laser cooling diatomic molecules for use in precision measurement of physical constants. Mr. Majumder holds a BS degree in Physics from Yale University and plans to pursue an MD-PhD degree in medical physics.
The inner workings of the human brain remains largely uncharted terrain. High-resolution, real-time measurement of in-vivo neuronal activity promises to provide new insights into the mechanics of cognition and perception. Unlike electrical signals, neuronal magnetic signals can be well-localized and are minimally attenuated by surrounding tissue. However, the magnetic signals produced by neurons are minute. Clinical magnetoencephalography systems employ cryogenic sensors in magnetically shielded facilities to achieve sufficient sensitivity. We are building a quantum-based, room-temperature magnetometer sensitive enough to detect the signatures of firing neurons. The sensor, employing nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond, could offer an alternative to existing magnetoencephalography techniques, enabling evaluation of neuronal signals outside of a shielded room. This type of advance could propel magnetoencephalography into a more widely-used diagnostic tool to help address neurological disorders including epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Vivienne Sze is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT. She works on computing systems that enable energy-efficient machine learning, computer vision, and video compression/processing for a wide range of applications, including autonomous navigation, digital health, and the internet of things. She is widely recognized for her leading work in these areas and has received many awards, including the AFOSR and DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Edgerton Faculty Award, several faculty awards from Google, Facebook, and Qualcomm, the 2018 Symposium on VLSI Circuits Best Student Paper Award, the 2017 CICC Outstanding Invited Paper Award, and the 2016 IEEE Micro Top Picks Award. As a member of the JCT-VC team, she received the Primetime Engineering Emmy Award for the development of the HEVC video compression standard. She is a co-editor of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC): Algorithms and Architectures (Springer, 2014) and co-author of Efficient Processing of Deep Neural Networks (Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture, Morgan Claypool, 2020). For more information about Prof. Sze’s research, please visit http://sze.mit.edu.
Computing near the sensor is preferred over the cloud due to privacy and/or latency concerns for a wide range of applications including robotics/drones, self-driving cars, smart Internet of Things, and portable/wearable electronics. However, at the sensor there are often stringent constraints on energy consumption and cost in addition to the throughput and accuracy requirements of the application. In this talk, we will describe how joint algorithm and hardware design can be used to reduce energy consumption while delivering real-time and robust performance for applications including deep learning, computer vision, autonomous navigation/exploration and video/image processing. We will show how energy-efficient techniques that exploit correlation and sparsity to reduce compute, data movement and storage costs can be applied to various tasks including image classification, depth estimation, super-resolution, localization and mapping.
Aleksander Madry is a professor of computer science in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a principal investigator at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is also director of the MIT Center for Deployable Machine Learning. His research interests span algorithms, continuous optimization, the science of deep learning, and developing reliable, trustworthy and secure machine learning systems. Before coming to MIT, he was a postdoc at Microsoft Research New England and on the faculty of EPFL in Switzerland. His honors include an NSF Career Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science’s Presburger Award. Madry earned an undergraduate degree in theoretical physics and computer science from University of Wroclaw, and a PhD in computer science from MIT.
Machine learning has made tremendous progress over the last decade. It's thus tempting to believe that ML techniques are a "silver bullet", capable of making progress on any real-world problem they are applied to.
But is that really so?
In this talk, I will discuss a major challenge in the real-world deployment of ML: making ML solutions robust, reliable and secure. In particular, I will survey the widespread vulnerabilities of state-of-the-art ML models to various forms of noise, and then outline promising approach to alleviating these deficiencies as well as to making models be more human-aligned.
MIT Vice Provost for International Activities (VPIA) Associate Director, Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) Clarence J. LeBel Professor, MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
Duane Boning is Clarence J. LeBel Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT. His research focus is machine learning and statistical methods for modeling and control of variation in manufacturing processes, devices, and circuits, with over 300 journal and conference publications on these topics. He worked at Texas Instruments from 1991 through 1992. He served as Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing from 2001 to 2011, as Associate Department Head of EECS at MIT from 2004 to 2011, and as Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty from 2019 to 2021. He is currently Engineering Faculty Co-Director for the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) Program, Faculty Co-Director for the Machine Intelligence in Manufacturing and Operations (MIT MIMO) effort, and MIT Vice Provost for International Activities. Prof. Boning is a Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to modeling and control in semiconductor manufacturing.
The large amounts of both structured and unstructured data created in manufacturing and operations today present enormous opportunities to apply advanced analytics, machine learning and deep learning. This talk will describe specific use cases in process control and optimization; yield prediction and enhancement; defect inspection and classification and anomaly detection in time series data. Additionally, some of the unique manufacturing and operations challenges like: class imbalance, concept drift and complex multivariate time dynamics will be described. This research has led to the creation of MIT MIMO (Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations) which will be described during this talk.
Antonio Torralba is the Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He also heads the faculty of artificial intelligence and decision-making in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Previously, he led the MIT Quest for Intelligence as its inaugural director and the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab as its MIT director. He researches computer vision, machine learning and human visual perception, with an interest in building systems that can perceive the world as humans do. He has received an NSF Career Award, the International Association for Pattern Recognition's JK Aggarwal Prize, a Frank Quick Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship and a Louis D. Smullin (’39) Award for Teaching Excellence. Torralba earned a BS from Telecom BCN, Spain, and a PhD from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France.
It is an exciting time for computer vision. With the success of new computational architectures for visual processing, such as deep neural networks (e.g., ConvNets) and access to image databases with millions of labeled examples (e.g., ImageNet, Places), the state of the art in computer vision is advancing rapidly. Even when no examples are available, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have demonstrated a remarkable ability to learn from images and are able to create nearly photorealistic images. The performance achieved by convNets and GANs is remarkable and constitute the state of the art on many tasks. But why do convNets work so well? what is the nature of the internal representation learned by a convNet in a classification task? How does a GAN represent our visual world internally? In this talk I will show that the internal representation in both convNets and GANs can be interpretable in some important cases. I will then show several applications for object recognition, computer graphics, and unsupervised learning from images and audio.
Fred Goff is a leading voice in Worker advocacy and in bringing balance back to capitalism. Fred is the founder and CEO of Jobcase – a social platform that empowers over 100 million Americans as they manage their own future of work. Jobcase is a leader in “people-first tech-strategy” which includes democratizing the benefits of big data, machine learning and blockchain for the benefit of America’s workforce. Fred Goff holds a BS in Economics as well as an M.S. in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School and also earned an M.S. in the Management of Technology from MIT. Prior to switching his career to worker advocacy and tech, Fred enjoyed success as both a proprietary trader and machine-learning based hedge fund manager.
To what end? Are we driving technology forward to empower people or to purely displace. As an ML driven company dedicated to empowering over 100 million members, Fred brings a strong voice to how technologists can pursue research to betterment of workers and not detriment and in doing so can help bring balance back to capitalism. Empowering people in a digital age provides great context to the awesome R&D being reviewed.
Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience Director, Martinos Imaging Center MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research
McGovern Investigator John Gabrieli directs the research and administrative activities of the center, providing executive-level leadership and oversight to the center’s operations. Gabrieli, who is also a professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, is interested in the neural basis of memory, thought and emotion in the human brain, and he also seeks to understand the brain abnormalities that underlie neurological and psychiatric disease.
The MIT Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili) is a cross-disciplinary, Institute wide initiative to foster quantitative and rigorous research about how people learn and how knowledge from that research can enhance learning from school through adult professional education. MITili aims to integrate knowledge from psychology, economics, neuroscience, engineering, and public policy in pursuit of these goals. The work of the future will require life-long learning, and knowledge from learning science ought to enhance that learning. I will show how knowledge from learning science can enhance work-place learning. I will also review how technology might enable, and in some cases disable, learning. I will also share recent findings about how sleep matters for higher education. Finally, I will share some evidence about the brain bases of adult learning.
How many Design Thinking workshops have you been to in the last 5 years? How many times have you seen the IDEO shopping cart video? User-Centered Design has changed how industry innovates and has taught us how to go beyond business needs and design for customer/user needs. But think about your favorite products—do they just give you satisfaction as a customer or user? Or do they see into your life and fulfill you at a deeper level? We founded Human Element to go beyond users and to design for humans. In this talk, we will present our proprietary methodology, Whole Human Design to show you how we do that.
Senior Lecturer, Leadership and Sustainability MIT Sloan School of Management
Peter M. Senge is the founding chair of SoL (Society of Organizational Learning), a global network of organizations, researchers, and consultants dedicated to the “interdependent development of people and their institutions”, Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management MIT, and cofounder of the Academy for Systemic Change, which seeks to accelerate the growth of the field of systemic change worldwide. His work centers on promoting shared understanding of complex issues and shared leadership for healthier human systems. This involves major cross-sector projects focused on global food systems, climate change, regenerative economies, and the future of education.
Peter is the author of The Fifth Discipline and coauthor of the three related fieldbooks: Presence, and The Necessary Revolution. The Fifth Discipline (over two million copies sold), was recognized by Harvard Business Review as “one of the seminal management books of the last 75 years,” and by the Financial Times as one of five “most important” management books. The Journal of Business Strategy named him one of the 24 people who had the greatest influence on business strategy in the 20th century. Recently, he was named to the “1000 Talents” Program (Renzai) in China to help China become a leader in systemic change, to benefit itself and the world.
Peter has been at the forefront of organizational learning since publishing his classic text, The Fifth Discipline, in 1990. The Fifth Discipline provides the theories and methods to foster aspiration, develop reflective conversation, and understand complexity in order to build a learning organization. Peter is driven by the desire to understand how we can work together to live in harmony with one another and with Mother Earth. He continues to push the boundaries of our understanding of organizational learning, teaching his principles in workshops and seminars across the country. Peter describes his process as “sharing” rather than “teaching”, in an attempt to “help people see not just what has been done before, but sharing what has been done, by suggestion, surfacing, or eliciting what new might be possible.”
Throughout his career, Peter has been asking, “How do we create the best conditions, including the tools and methods, for enabling learning communities?” Since the publication of The Fifth Discipline, Peter has shared the driving principles of organizational learning with business, education, health care, and government. Through his work, Peter strives to foster learning communities around the globe in order to improve our world.
Peter graduated from Stanford University with a BS in engineering. He holds an MS in social systems modeling and a PhD in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Research Program Manager, MIT Mobility Systems Center
Joanna Moody is the Research Program Manager for the Mobility Systems Center, MIT Energy Initiative's newest Low-Carbon Energy Center and a lead researcher on one of the Center’s first projects measuring the "option value" of owning a car (including convenience, flexibility, control, and status that comes from owning the asset). Joanna’s research uses econometrics and psychometrics, paired with structural equation modeling, to explore the interactions between policies, attitudes, and ownership and use of privately-owned, gasoline-powered vehicle. Joanna holds Ph.D. (2019) and M.S. (2016) degrees in Transportation from MIT.
Dr. Sergey Paltsev is a Deputy Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative and MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), and a Director of the MIT Energy-at-Scale Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. He is the lead modeler in charge of the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model of the world economy. Dr. Paltsev is an author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and books in the area of energy economics, climate policy, transport, advanced energy technologies, and international trade. Sergey was a Lead Author of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is a recipient of the 2012 Pyke Johnson Award (by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, USA, for the best paper in the area of planning and environment). Sergey is an Advisory Board Member for the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Consortium and a Member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium. Additional information at:
https://globalchange.mit.edu/about-us/personnel/paltsev-sergey
- Sergey Paltsev (9 minutes) "Mobility policy, energy demand, and global scenarios" - Jessika Trancik (9 minutes) "Low-carbon mobility technology development: Measuring progress and predicting innovation opportunities using new models"
Mobility systems are constantly changing. Currently, the availability of on-demand mobility services and the development of new vehicle technologies (e.g. electric vehicles) is altering the way we travel in urban areas. At the same time, policymakers around the world tackle the environmental challenges associated with mobility systems through new policies including emission standards and driving restrictions. This session sets out to (i) provide an overview of emerging vehicle technologies for passenger ground transportation, especially with regard to fuels and powertrains, (ii) outline the interaction of technology adoption with different policy scenarios, and (iii) describe current adoption of new technologies and future innovation opportunities.
Randall Field is the executive director of the MITEI’s Future Energy Systems Center. He was previously executive director for the Mobility Systems Center, MITEI’s Low-Carbon Energy Center assessing the impact of emerging transformations in vehicle and fuel technologies, service and business models, policies, demographics, and consumer behavior in the movement of both passengers and goods. He was also the executive director for MIT’s Mobility of the Future study which produced the Insights in the Future Mobility report covering global projections of alternative fuel vehicle fleets and energy consumption, deployment of charging and fueling infrastructure, attitudes towards mobility, and the impacts of innovative technologies and business models on urban mobility. As executive director for the Conversion Research Program at MIT for 10 years, Field worked with a multidisciplinary team of researchers to explore various conversion technologies for production of alternative fuels. Prior to MIT, Field worked for Aspen Technology for 23 years. Field received a SM in chemical engineering practice from MIT and a BS in chemical engineering from Caltech.
Sertac Karaman is the director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, and an associate professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. His research areas are robotics and control theory, particularly the applications of probability theory, stochastic processes, stochastic geometry, formal methods, and optimization for the design and analysis of high-performance cyber-physical systems. The applications of this research include driverless cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, distributed aerial surveillance systems, air traffic control, and certification and verification of control systems software. Karaman received a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science and an SM in mechanical engineering from MIT and BS degrees in mechanical engineering and in computer engineering from the Istanbul Technical University.
Sanjay Sarma is the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He is the first Dean of Digital Learning at MIT. He co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT and developed many of the key technologies behind the EPC suite of RFID standards now used worldwide. He was also the the founder and CTO of OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems (NYSE: CKP) in 2008. He serves on the boards of GS1, EPCglobal and several startup companies including Senaya and ESSESS.
Dr. Sarma received his Bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology, his Masters from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Sarma also worked at Schlumberger Oilfield Services in Aberdeen, UK, and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories in Berkeley, California. He has authored over 75 academic papers in computational geometry, sensing, RFID, automation and CAD, and is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research including the MacVicar Fellowship, the Business Week eBiz Award and Informationweek's Innovators and Influencers Award. He advises several national governments and global companies.
- Sertac Karaman (17 minutes) "The path towards autonomous vehicles on our roads" - Sanjay Sarma (17 minutes) "Digitalization of the mobility value chain: opportunities and implications"
Over the past decade, new digital technologies have re-defined mobility in urban areas through new on-demand mobility services offered through a sharing economy model. This session will explore future opportunities associated with digital transformations of the mobility value chain and will assess the implications linked to these transformations from a strategic perspective. In particular, the technological foundations of in-vehicle digitalization will be explored for the case of autonomous vehicles, with a focus on assessing current technical implementations and potential technical solutions.
Director, MIT Megacity Logistics Lab Research Scientist MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics
Matthias Winkenbach is the Director of the MIT Megacity Logistics Lab and a Research Associate at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. His current research focuses on multi-tier distribution network design in the context of urban logistics and last-mile delivery, urban freight policy and infrastructure design, as well as data analytics and visualization in an urban logistics context. Dr. Winkenbach received his Ph.D. in Logistics and his Masters in Business with specializations in Finance and Economics at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany. He also studied at NYU Stern School of Business in New York as well as at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) in Montréal, Canada. His doctoral studies focused on the optimal design of multi-tier urban delivery networks with mixed fleets. His work was closely linked to a research project with the French national postal operator La Poste.
During and after his doctoral studies, he spent several months at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics as a Visiting Scholar. Dr. Winkenbach’s previous professional work includes working with Volkswagen in South Africa on local sourcing and cost optimization, with Deutsche Telekom in Germany on co-investment models for network infrastructure expansions, with McKinsey & Company in the United States, and in Germany on organizational redesign in the automotive industry and on innovative delivery models in the postal and express logistics sector, as well as various other projects in the mining, shipbuilding, consulting and logistics industries.
Dr. Winkenbach won the Science Award for Supply Chain Management of the German Logistics Association (BVL) in 2014, was amongst the finalists for the 2015 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, and recently published academic papers in Transportation Science, and Interfaces, as well as some practitioner oriented pieces in the Wall Street Journal and the Sloan Management Review. During and after his doctoral studies, he spent several months at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics as a Visiting Scholar. Dr. Winkenbach’s previous professional work includes working with Volkswagen in South Africa on local sourcing and cost optimization, with Deutsche Telekom in Germany on co-investment models for network infrastructure expansions, with McKinsey & Company in the United States, and in Germany on organizational redesign in the automotive industry and on innovative delivery models in the postal and express logistics sector, as well as various other projects in the mining, shipbuilding, consulting and logistics industries.
Dr. Winkenbach won the Science Award for Supply Chain Management of the German Logistics Association (BVL) in 2014, was amongst the finalists for the 2015 Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice, and recently published academic papers in Transportation Science, and Interfaces, as well as some practitioner oriented pieces in the Wall Street Journal and the Sloan Management Review.
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Head, Division of Humans and Automation Director, International Center for Air Transportation MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
R. John Hansman is the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics & Astronautics MIT, where he is the Director of the MIT International Center for Air Transportation. He conducts research in the application of information technology in operational aerospace systems. Dr. Hansman holds 6 patents and has authored over 250 technical publications. He has over 5800 hours of pilot in-command time in airplanes, helicopters and sailplanes including meteorological, production and engineering flight test experience. Professor Hansman chairs the US Federal Aviation Administration Research Engineering & Development Advisory Committee (REDAC) as well as other national and international advisory committees. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), is a Fellow of the AIAA and has received numerous awards including the AIAA Dryden Lectureship in Aeronautics Research, the ATCA Kriske Air Traffic Award, a Laurel from Aviation Week & Space Technology, and the FAA Excellence in Aviation Award.
- Matthias Winkenbach (14 minutes) "Opportunities and Challenges of Urban Delivery of Goods" - John Hansman (14 minutes) "Opportunities and challenges for urban air mobility"
Urban areas around the globe face increasing mobility challenges. Demand for both passenger and freight services continue to increase, straining already congested systems. Opportunities to build new infrastructure to address these challenges are limited. Therefore, novel system designs are needed to support mobility in future urban environments. For passenger transportation, Urban Air Mobility systems could create additional capacity through largely decoupling transportation from the confinements of the ground. For freight transportation, existing ground infrastructure (e.g. metro systems) could be leveraged systematically and autonomous systems in combination with additive manufacturing techniques for localized production could disrupt urban logistics.
David R. Keith is Assistant Professor of System Dynamics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Drawing on his experience working in the automotive industry, David studies consumer behavior, firm strategy and the formation of markets for emerging automotive technologies. His research examines issues including spatial patterns of technology adoption, supply constraints in production, platform competition, and the impact of new technologies on energy consumption and the environment.
David has received several awards for his research, including a Fulbright scholarship, an Alcoa Foundation Fellowship from the American-Australian Association, and a Martin Family Sustainability Fellowship from the MIT Energy Initiative. David previously worked for Holden, the Australian subsidiary of General Motors, and URS Corporation, a global engineering and environmental consultancy.
David holds BEng (Hons.), BCom, and MEnv degrees from the University of Melbourne (Australia) and a PhD from the MIT Engineering Systems Division.
Sarah Williams is currently an Associate Professor of Technology and Urban Planning. She also is Director of the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning. The Civic Data Design Lab works with data, maps, and mobile technologies to develop interactive design and communication strategies that expose urban policy issues to broader audiences.
Trained as a Geographer (Clark University), Landscape Architect (University of Pennsylvania), and Urban Planner (MIT), Williams's work combines geographic analysis and design. Williams is most well known for her work as part of the Million Dollar Blocks team which highlighted the cost of incarceration, Digital Matatus which developed the first data set on a informal transit system searchable in Google Maps, and a more a recent project that uses social media data to understand housing vacancy and Ghost Cities in China.
Williams' design work has been widely exhibited including work in the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City. Prior to MIT, she was Co-Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Williams has won numerous awards including being named top 25 planners in the technology and 2012 Game Changer by Metropolis Magazine. Her work is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Seoul Biennale Cities Exhibition in Korea.
Jinhua Zhao is the Professor of Cities and Transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prof. Zhao integrates behavioral and computational thinking to decarbonize the world’s mobility system.
Prof. Zhao founded the MIT Mobility Initiative, coalescing the Institute’s efforts on transportation research, education, entrepreneurship, and engagement. He hosts the MIT Mobility Forum, highlighting transportation innovation from MIT and across the globe.
Prof. Zhao directs the JTL Urban Mobility Lab and Transit Lab, leading long-term collaborations with transportation authorities and operators worldwide and enabling cross-culture learning between cities in North America, Asia, and Europe.
Prof. Zhao leads the program “Mens, Manus, and Machina (M3S): How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Future of Learning” at the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).
He is the co-founder and chief scientist for TRAM.Global, a mobility decarbonization venture.
Research Interest
He brings behavioral science and transportation technology together to shape travel behavior, design mobility systems, and reform urban policies. He develops computational methods to sense, predict, nudge, and regulate travel behavior and designs multimodal mobility systems that integrate automated and shared mobility with public transport. He sees transportation as a language to describe a person, characterize a city, and understand an institution and establishes the behavioral foundation for transportation systems and policies.
An architect and engineer by training, Professor Carlo Ratti teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he directs the Senseable City Lab, and is a founding part-ner of the international design and innovation office Carlo Ratti Associati. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.
A leading voice in the debate on new technologies’ impact on urban life and design, Car-lo has co-authored over 500 publications, including “The City of Tomorrow” (Yale University Press, with Matthew Claudel), and holds several technical patents. His articles and interviews have appeared on international media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Scientific American, BBC, Project Syn-dicate, Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 Ore, Domus. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome, and MoMA in New York City.
Carlo has been featured in Esquire Magazine’s ‘Best & Brightest’ list and in Thames & Hud-son’s selection of ‘60 innovators’ shaping our creative future. Blueprint Magazine included him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’, Forbes listed him as one of the ‘Names You Need To Know’ and Fast Company named him as one of the ’50 Most Influen-tial Designers in America’. He was also featured in Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List: 50 people who will change the world’. Three of his projects – the Digital Water Pavilion, the Copenhagen Wheel and Scribit – have been included by TIME Magazine in the list of the ‘Best Inventions of the Year’.
Carlo has been a presenter at TED (in 2011 and 2015), program director at the Strelka Insti-tute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow, curator of the BMW Guggenheim Pavilion in Berlin, and was named Inaugural Innovator in Residence by the Queensland Government. He was the curator of the Future Food District pavilion for the 2015 World Expo in Milan and chief curator of the "Eyes of the City" section at the 2019 UABB Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism of Shenzhen. He is currently serving as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization.
Kent Larson directs the City Science (formerly Changing Places) group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on developing urban interventions that enable more entrepreneurial, livable, high-performance districts in cities. To that end, his projects include advanced simulation and augmented reality for urban design, transformable micro-housing for millennials, mobility-on-demand systems that create alternatives to private automobiles, and Urban Living Lab deployments in Hamburg, Andorra, Taipei, and Boston.
Larson and researchers from his group received the “10-Year Impact Award” from UbiComp 2014. This is a “test of time” award for work that, with the benefit of hindsight, has had the greatest impact over the previous decade.
Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City, with design work published in Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, The New York Times, A+U, and Architectural Digest. The New York Times Review of Books selected his book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks (2000) as one of that year’s ten best books in architecture.
Given the severe mobility challenges in urbanizing areas, numerous visions for designing urban mobility systems are discussed by policymakers, planners, and industry. These visions must anticipate technological and sociodemographic developments, while accounting for the constraints of operator business models and environmental concerns. In this session, MIT faculty will share and discuss their ideas for urban mobility systems around the globe, considering both promising technologies as well as heterogeneities among the world’s urban centers.