Hosted by Yangpu District, Shanghai
Industry worldwide depends upon emerging technologies to grow and globalize their companies. New discoveries in science and technology, as well as innovations in management can transform or disrupt business. The 2017 MIT China Conference in Shanghai will present a program featuring distinguished MIT faculty and researchers working in biotechnology, ICT, advanced manufacturing, energy, and more. Representatives of greater China-based ILP member companies and MIT labs will also be highlighted, as will MIT-related startups commercializing exciting new products and services.
Mr. Glickman joined the Industrial Liaison Program in January 2000, serving as the MIT liaison for companies worldwide, and joined the senior management of the office in 2005.
Prior to joining ILP, Todd was Assistant Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the professional society for meteorologists, which is based in Boston. At AMS, Todd's responsibilities included strategic planning for conferences, headquarters' liaison with AMS member boards and committees, support to the AMS Council, and public relations. In addition, Todd was Managing Editor for the AMS Glossary of Meteorology (2nd edition).
From 1979 to 1994, Todd held a variety of positions with WSI Corporation of Billerica, MA, including Manager, New Product Development, Media Marketing Manager, and Manager of the Government Program Office. WSI was a pioneer in the development of real-time weather information, providing value-added information and workstations for clients in media, aviation, industry, academia, and government. Some of Todd's projects included development of the weather data/information infrastructure for The Weather Channel; the introduction of digital satellite and radar imagery for television; planning and implementation of a network of weather briefing systems for the Federal Aviation Administration; and serving as liaison with the National Weather Service and professional organizations. In addition, Todd was instrumental in helping to develop the public-private partnership between the weather information industry and the Federal government.
Concurrently, Todd has a more than 30-year career as a radio meteorologist, and has been heard on dozens of stations nationwide. Today, he can be heard occasionally on all-news WCBS Newsradio-88 in New York City. He has chaired numerous meteorological conferences and symposia, and served on a number of boards and committees for the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He was awarded the AMS Seal of Approval for Radio Weathercasting in 1979, and was elected a Fellow of the AMS in 1997.
Todd's interests include transportation systems of all types, and he is an officer and past-trustee of the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, Maine. At MIT, Todd an officer and trustee of the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, which oversees the campus radio station WMBR-FM. He also volunteers as the academic advisor to a group of MIT freshman.
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.
Associate Provost Alexander and I Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering MIT Office of the Provost
Dr. Karen K. Gleason is Associate Provost and the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1987 and has served as Executive Officer of the Chemical Engineering Department, Associate Director for the Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies; and as Associate Dean of Engineering for Research.
Professor Gleason’s research focuses on the near room-temperature synthesis of ultrathin, conformal organic films by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Gleason has authored more than 250 publications and holds 18 issued US patents for CVD polymers and their applications in optoelectronic, sensing, microfluidic, energy storage, and biomedical devices, and for the surface modification of membranes.
Gleason is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) and held the Donders Visiting Professorship Chair at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her awards include the ID TechEx Printed Electronics Europe Best Technical Development Materials Award, the AIChE Process Development Research Award, and Young Investigator Awards from both the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. She has delivered the Van Ness Award Lecture at the Rensselaer Polytechnic University and the Tis Lahiri Lecture at Vanderbuilt University.
In 2001, Prof Gleason co-founded GVD Corporation, which has successfully scaled-up and commercialized technology invented in her MIT lab. GVD is headquartered in Cambridge, MA and has manufacturing facilities in Greenville, SC. In 2014, she co-founded Drop-Wise for improving the efficiency of steam power cycles.
Gleason received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Her BS and MS degrees are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also won All-American honors in swimming.
MIT's has a long-standing focus on discovery for practical impact and commercial value. The status of MIT's current industrial engagements will be summarized as will highlights of new initiatives for addressing problems of global importance. The local ecosystem near the campus which blends entrepreneurs, risk capital, and market leading companies plays an essential role in invention, innovation, and commercialization.
Shuguang Zhang is at MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research focuses on designs of biological molecules, particularly proteins and peptides that are short fragment of proteins. He received his B.S from Sichuan University, China and Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from University of California at Santa Barbara, USA. He was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow and a Whitaker Foundation Investigator at MIT. He was a 2003 Fellow of Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS fellow). His work of designer self-assembling peptide scaffold won 2004 R&D100 award. He won a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and spent academic sabbatical in University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. He won 2006 Wilhelm Exner Medal of Austria. He was elected to Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2010. He was elected to American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2011 and elected to US National Academy of Inventors in 2013. He won the 2020 Emil Thomas Kaiser Award from the Protein Society. He published >170 scientific papers that have been cited over 32,000 with a h-index 85. He is also a co-founder and board member of Molecular Frontiers Foundation. Molecular Frontiers Foundation organizes annually Molecular Frontiers Symposia in Sweden and around the world. The Foundation encourages young people to ask big and good scientific questions about nature. The selected winners will be awarded for Molecular Frontiers Inquiry Prize.
Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) http://www.cba.mit.edu is at the forefront of cutting edge research and inventions. It has a few hundreds patents and pending patents. Many of these patents have been licensed for commercial product developments. For example, E-Ink patent was licensed to start a E-ink company http://www.eink.com in 1998 that is the results of Amazon Kindle and Chinese as well as numerous other ebooks in the world. E-ink was acquired by a Taiwan company. The students at CBA also invented the inexpensive RFID and the RFID readers. These students formed ThingMagic http://rfid.thingmagic.com, which was acquired in 2010 by Trimbe. In late 1990s, students at CBA invented 3D printers. They then formed a company Formlabs https://formlabs.com. Now it sells all kinds of 3D printers worldwide. The CBA graduates also formed Otherlab https://otherlab.com that invents all kinds of super materials, clean energy devices, soft robots, simple transportation systems and other gadgets. I founded 3DMatrix in 2001 and it now produces hydrogels for rapid stopping bleeding during surgery where sutures or cauterization are impractical or impossible, for accelerated wound healing, for 3-dimension tissue cell cultures and other uses in Europe, Middle-East, Southeast Asia and South America http://www.puramatrix.com. Furthermore, several licensed technologies are widely used in our daily life including sensors for car airbag. Many industrial sponsors support our cutting edge inventions.
MIT Media Lab https://www.media.mit.edu also has made tremendous impact on technology inventions in the world. Media Lab wrote the first software for reading news with embedded images and video on the electronic devices in early 1990s. It was a total novelty then and now we all take for granted. It currently invents personal robots for cares of young and old people. The early prototypes of Google glass were invented in the Media Lab and many more.
Mr. Tianwen Liu (TW Liu) is the founder, Chairman and CEO of iSoftStone Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: ISS), a leading China-based provider of consulting & solutions, IT services and business process outsourcing to clients both domestically in China and worldwide.
Mr. Liu has over 20 years experience in technical and management roles in the IT industry. Since founding iSoftStone in 2001, Mr. Liu has become a leading voice for China's IT outsourcing industry and the globalization of Chinese enterprises, and has been recognized by domestic and international publications as such. Mr. Liu received the “Award of People of the Year with Remarkable Contributions to Outsourcing in China” for three consecutive years (2010 - 2012) by Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, as well as awarded “Top Leaders of the Past 10 Years in China IT Services Industry” in 2012.
Prior to iSoftStone, Mr. Liu co-founded AsiaEC.com in 1999 and led efforts to build the company from inception to become China's largest on-line office supply and services provider (until it was acquired by Office Depot in 2006). He also served in multinational companies such as Bechtel and Siemens.
Mr. Liu is a Sloan Fellow and holds an MBA degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.
China is transforming from the world’s export factory to an innovation driven modern service economy. MIT is world renowned research university for its technology and business innovations. The presentation highlights how iSoftStone collaborates with MIT and introduces its leading technical innovations and researches into China, which in turn helps China’s economic development.
Elisabeth Reynolds is a Partner in Unless, an investment firm focused on industrial transformation, and a Lecturer in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She was Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing and Economic Development at the National Economic Council until October, 2022. During her time at the White House, she helped lead the Administration’s work on supply chain challenges, national manufacturing strategy, regional economic development and the broader industrial policy agenda. Before working in the Biden Administration, Reynolds was the executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center and co-led, with Professors David Autor and David Mindell, the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future. In both roles, she worked on manufacturing-related issues including growing innovative firms to scale and technology adoption by small and large firms.
Countries and regions around the world seek to increase their innovation capacity to boost productivity and economic growth for the 21st century. Where are investments being made, and what strategies are being pursued? How do national assets in the form of institutions, networks, and leadership contribute to the ongoing process of creating and disseminating new products, processes and services effectively in a rapidly changing and increasingly open global economy? How does China’s current strategy fit into this larger context?
Gang Chen is the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He served as the Department Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT from 2013 to 2018. He obtained his PhD degree from the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley. He was a faculty member at Duke University and UCLA before joining MIT in 2001. He received an NSF Young Investigator Award, an R&D 100 award, an ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, an ASME Frank Kreith Award in Energy, a Nukiyama Memorial Award by the Japan Heat Transfer Society, a World Technology Network Award in Energy, an Eringen medal from the Society of Engineering Science, and the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising from MIT. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He serves on the board of the Asian American Scholar Forum (aasforum.org). He is an academician of Academy Sinica, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Human history has very much depended on how we used heat from the sun and terrestrial sources. Over 90% of human society’s energy input is used by first converting it into heat, and yet only 40% of the total energy input is utilized, significantly lower than what the second law of thermodynamics allows. Understanding of basic heat carrier transport and energy conversion at nanoscale can lead to new materials and devices to improve the efficiency of heat utilization. This talk will present some of our work on developing advanced materials and devices to improve the efficiency of solar and thermal energy conversion devices and systems. To lower the cost of solar energy to electricity conversion, we use nanostructures to reduce the thickness of crystalline silicon thin-film solar cells and optically-transparent and thermally-insulating aerogels to replace the vacuum-tube solar collectors in concentrated solar thermal systems. We improve thermoelectric materials via nanostructuring and demonstrate significant improvements in the efficiency of solar thermoelectric energy conversion devices. We also demonstrate the ability of boiling water under unconcentrated sunlight using spectrally selective surfaces. For terrestrial thermal systems, we show that by reflecting infrared radiation back to its emitting heat source, we can significantly improve the efficiency of converting thermally-radiated photons into electricity via thermophotovoltaic devices and the luminous efficiency of incandescent light bulbs. We can turn a battery into an efficient thermal-to-electrical energy converter by cycling it between high and low temperatures. Although polymers are usually thermal insulators, we show that they can be made as thermally conductive as metals by aligning molecular orientations. With properly chosen polymer fiber diameters, we design fabrics so that they are opaque to visible light and yet allow thermal radiation from human body to escape to environment for passively cooling. Nanoscience foundations behind these diverse innovations will be explained along the way.
Wilson graduated from UC Berkeley engineering school in 1979 and joined Defond. Within 2 years Defond was the first switch maker in Hong Kong to obtain UL approval and quickly became the top supplier for that market. Today, Defond is the biggest global supplier of switches for the power tools sector. During the early ‘90s Defond started involvement in electronics and was the top supplier of Appliance Leakage Circuit Interrupters for the US market. With a combination of expertise on mechanical, electronics and firmware, Defond
Professor of Mechanical Engineering MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Nicholas X. Fang received his BS and MS in physics from Nanjing University, and his PhD in mechanical engineering from University of California Los Angeles. He is currently professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Prior to MIT, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2004 to 2010. Professor Fang’s areas of research look at nanophotonics and nanofabrication. His recognitions include the ASME Chao and Trigger Young Manufacturing Engineer Award (2013); the ICO prize from the International Commission of Optics (2011); an invited participant of the Frontiers of Engineering Conference by National Academies in 2010; the NSF CAREER Award (2009) and MIT Technology Review Magazine’s 35 Young Innovators Award (2008).
For centuries we enjoyed light and sound as tools to manipulate, store and control the flow of information and energy. However, our need to transmit information and energy through these wave channels suffered a physical limit dictated by diffraction. For example, Young’s double slit experiments suggest that for an observer at a distance away from the two slits, one cannot distinguish these slits from one when the gap of these slits are close to wavelength of light. Can we overcome the diffraction limit by bending and folding waves, in a similar fashion to paper origami?
In this seminar, I will present our efforts to fabricate 3D complex microstructures at unprecedented dimensions. In the arena of sound waves, these structures show promise on focusing and rerouting ultrasound through broadband and highly transparent metamaterials. Recently our research effort on acoustic metamaterials has been expanded to tailoring the wavefront and energy flow of elastic waves. In the optical domain, we report our development of optical imaging probes to measure the distinct local modes in the nanostructures that promote electron-photon interaction down to layers of a few atoms thick, which promise for efficient light emission and detection. These novel metamaterials could be the foundation of broadband photo-absorbers, directional emitters, as well as compact and power-efficient devices.
Xuanhe Zhao is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. The mission of Zhao Lab is to advance science and technology between humans and machines to address grand societal challenges in health and sustainability. A major current focus is the study and development of soft materials and systems. Dr. Zhao has won early career awards from NSF, ONR, ASME, SES, AVS, Adhesion Society, JAM, EML, and Materials Today. He has been a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher since 2018. Bioadhesive ultrasound, based on Zhao Lab’s work published in Science, was named one of TIME Magazine's Best Inventions of the year in 2022. SanaHeal Inc., based on Zhao Lab’s work published in Nature, was awarded the 2023 Nature Spinoff Prize. Over ten patents from Zhao Lab have been licensed by companies and have contributed to FDA-approved and widely-used medical devices.
While human tissues are mostly soft, wet and bioactive; machines are commonly hard, dry and biologically inert. Bridging human-machine interfaces is of imminent importance in addressing grand challenges in health, security, sustainability and joy of living facing our society in the 21st century. However, designing human-machine interfaces is extremely challenging, due to the fundamentally contradictory properties of human and machine. At MIT SAMs Lab, we propose to use tough bioactive hydrogels to bridge human-machine interfaces. On one side, bioactive hydrogels with similar physiological properties as tissues can naturally integrate with human body, playing functions such as scaffolds, catheters, drug reservoirs, and wearable devices. On the other side, the hydrogels embedded with electronic and mechanical components can control and response to external devices and signals. In the talk, I will first present a bioinspired approach and a general framework to design bioactive and robust hydrogels as the matrices for human-machine interfaces. I will then discuss large-scale manufacturing strategies to fabricate robust and bioactive hydrogels and hydrogel electronics and machines, including 3D printing. Prototypes including smart hydrogel band-aids, hydrogel robots and hydrogel circuits will be further demonstrated.
MIT Startup Exchange actively promotes collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry. Qualified startups are those founded and/or led by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni, or are based on MIT-licensed technology. Industry participants are principally members of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP).
MIT Startup Exchange maintains a propriety database of over 1,500 MIT-connected startups with roots across MIT departments, labs and centers; it hosts a robust schedule of startup workshops and showcases, and facilitates networking and introductions between startups and corporate executives.
STEX25 is a startup accelerator within MIT Startup Exchange, featuring 25 “industry ready” startups that have proven to be exceptional with early use cases, clients, demos, or partnerships, and are poised for significant growth. STEX25 startups receive promotion, travel, and advisory support, and are prioritized for meetings with ILP’s 230 member companies.
MIT Startup Exchange and ILP are integrated programs of MIT Corporate Relations.
Participating startups Dapeng Zhang, Co-Founder, Precision Instrument and Optics Charlotte Wang, CEO & Founder, EQuota Xiaoning He, CEO & Founder, BMF Material Technology Inc Xinjie (Jeff) Zhang, CEO & Co-Founder, Novarials Stephen Tsao, Managing Director, Greater China, WiTricity Chazz Sims, CEO & Co-Founder, Wise Systems Nan-Wei Gong, CEO & Co-Founder, figur8 Lan Shi, Founder and Co-Chair, spaceyun Pinpin Zhu, CEO & Founder, Xiaoi Robot Kamal Youcef-Toumi, Advisor, Pipeguard Robotics
Alexander Slocum is the Walter and Hazel May Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He has 130+ patents and has helped develop 12 products that have received R&D 100 awards for “one of the one hundred best new technical products of the year”. He has helped start several successful precision manufacturing equipment companies and has a passion for working with industry to solve real problems and identify fundamental research topics. For the past decade his prime focus has been on renewable energy systems.
Degree: PhD, Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan Research Areas: system integration engineering, intelligent system vehicle, control system analysis and design, vehicle design. Achievements: 2 gold medals winner, 2107 Taipei International Invention Show and Technomart; Best thesis, Taiwan Automatic Control Program
Dina Katabi is the Thuan and Nicole Pham Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the director of MIT’s Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing (Wireless@MIT). Katabi is also a MacArthur Fellow and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. She received her PhD and MS from MIT and her BS from Damascus University. Katabi has received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship, the Sloan Fellowship, the NBX Career Development chair, and the NSF CAREER award. Katabi's doctoral dissertation won an ACM Honorable Mention award and a Sprowls award for academic excellence. Further, her work was recognized by the IEEE William R. Bennett prize, three ACM SIGCOMM Best Paper awards, an NSDI Best Paper award, the SIGCOMM Test-of-Time award, and a TR10 award for her work on the sparse Fourier transform. Several start-ups have been spun out of Katabi's lab, such as PiCharging and Emerald.
The emergence of ubiquitous sensing and internet-of-things technologies has yielded amazing advances, products, and services to improve everyday life. New advances in indoor localization achieve centimeter scale accuracy, enabling smart environments and context-aware applications through ubiquitous tracking of people and objects. Breakthrough research on health monitoring demonstrate new technologies that monitor sleep, falls, breathing and heart rate without asking the users to carry any device or sensor on their bodies. Novel sensors count cars, detect speeding, and deliver smart parking and smart transportation networks.
Professor of Mechanical Engineering Co-Director, Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Kamal Youcef-Toumi joined the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department faculty in 1985. He earned his advanced degrees (M.S. 1981 and Sc.D. 1985) in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. His undergraduate degree (B.S. in Mechanical Engineering awarded in 1979) is from the University of Cincinnati. Professor Youcef-Toumi's research has focused primarily on design, modeling, simulation, instrumentation, and control theory. The applications have included manufacturing, robotics, automation, metrology and nano/biotechnology. He teaches courses in the fields of dynamic systems; robotics; precision machine design and automatic control systems. Professor Youcef-Toumi was selected as a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator "in recognition of research and teaching accomplishments and academic potential." He served as a member on several professional committees of The National Science Foundation, Chairman of the Information Technology program within The Arab Science and Technology Foundation, Member of the review committee for European Union funded Network of Excellence for Innovative Production Machines and Systems, Member of the Scientific Committee for Qatar Foundation Annual Research Forum, Head of the Controls, Instrumentation and Robotics Area in the Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT, Member of the MIT Council for International Programs, and Research and Strategy Advisor for Qatar Computing Research Institute. He is the Co-Director of the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy and Co-Director of the Center for Complex Engineering Systems at MIT. Professor Youcef-Toumi has served as a consultant for a several companies including AT&T Bell Laboratories, EDO Corporation, Varian Radiation Division, Gillette Corp., Delta Search Laboratories, Jentek Sensors, Morgan Stanley Co., General Electric, TEKES - National Technology Agency of Finland, Jordan Hospital, Mitsubishi Electric Corp. Penn State University-College of Medicine - Cancer Institute, and Saudi Aramco. He is a member of IEEE and an ASME Fellow. He served as Chairman of the ASME Dynamics Systems & Control Division Robotics Panel. He was an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Controls, the International Program Committee Chairman for the 2010 IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems, and an Associate editor of the ASME's Dynamic Systems and Control Division (DSCD) Conference Editorial Board. He has served as Editor of several symposia/conference proceedings. Professor Youcef-Toumi is the author of over 320 publications, including a textbook on the theory and practice of direct-drive robots. He holds over 48 registered/pending patents. Professor Youcef-Toumi has been an invited lecturer at over 180 seminars at companies, research centers and universities throughout the world.
Robotics has evolved remarkably over the years with a great societal impact. Advancements in research and development have made robots capable of performing complex tasks in a more efficient and reliable manner than their predecessors, a generation of primitive robots that were merely designed for menial and repetitive tasks. Robotic systems have been utilized successfully in many applications. Some can operate autonomously in accomplishing complex missions while being aware of their surroundings.
By collocating machines, support systems, inputs and outputs can be shared with the potential to reduce overall system cost thereby helping to enable adoption of environmentally friendly systems. In particular, the oceans represent a vast resource (and challenge) for humanity: Offshore wind turbines can harvest wind energy, and their base structures can also serve as platforms for aquaculture systems, uranium-from seawater harvesting systems, and wave energy systems. Solar PV and wind turbines whose excess feeds pumped storage hydropower systems collocated with reverse osmosis plants located near the ocean could provide all the power and fresh water for many coastal regions such as Los Angeles, Lima, Eilat/Aqaba, the eastern UAE, and northern Iran (including Tehran) for example.