Can data series from a broad patient population be relevant and reliable tools in predicting individual outcomes when compared to personal wellness sensor data? Or, simply put from a patient perspective, “Can what happen to them, happen to me?” Retrieving and making use of “like-me” signal data based on similarity presents challenges far beyond digital marketing’s effectiveness in making targeted book and movie recommendations. By investigating and understanding those unique challenges, our research group has developed an approach based upon locality sensitive hashing (LSH). We will provide an update on our progress towards adapting LSH for fast and accurate Signal Like-Me capability.
2016 MIT Digital Health Conference
The MIT Trust Data Consortium aims to provide people, organizations, and computers the ability to manage access to their data more securely, efficiently, and equitably, while protecting personal data from incursion and corruption. As we have moved from the analog world to the digital world, our data, security, and governance systems have not kept pace. This has created numerous issues ranging from data insecurity (such as the large-scale government and private sector data losses of recent years) to a widening digital divide between rich and poor, including the global disenfranchisement of over 1.5 billion people who lack legal identity.
Electrochemical energy storage is emerging as a critical technology to enable sustainable electricity generation by alleviating intermittency from renewable sources, reducing transmission congestion, enhancing grid resiliency, and decoupling generation from demand. While several different rechargeable batteries have been proposed for and demonstrated in these applications, further cost reductions are needed for ubiquitous adoption. As such, recent research has focused on the discovery and development of new chemistries. Though exciting, most of these emerging concepts only consider new materials in isolation rather than as part of a battery system. Understanding the critical relationships between materials properties and overall battery price is key to enabling systematic improvements. In this presentation, I will discuss an approach to mapping feasible design spaces for incipient energy storage systems through techno-economic modeling and to using this knowledge to identify critical pathways at an early stage in the research and development process. While redox flow batteries will be used as an exemplar technology, the methods to be described here are applicable to a wide range of electrochemical systems and envisioned applications.
The rapid, stable cycling of rechargeable batteries requires well-controlled phase transformations of the redox active materials in each electrode, between the charged and discharged states. In Li-ion batteries, common intercalation materials, such as graphite and iron phosphate, undergo phase separation (into Li-rich and Li-poor phases), which limits the power density and causes degradation. A general mathematical theory, supported by recent x-ray imaging experiments, will be presented that shows how phase separation can be controlled by electro-autocatalytic reactions. For Li-metal batteries, theoretical and experimental results will be presented for the stability of lithium electrodeposition, controlled by electrokinetic phenomena in charged porous separators.
Making your mark in the multi-billion dollar global sports industry is a challenge. So how do teams like the Red Sox and the Dallas Cowboys drive revenue? They create powerhouse brands that attract, engage, and retain fans by leveraging big data, creating cross-platform media and engagement plans, and using dynamic social media strategies to maximize live event experiences. Using theoretical and real-world examples, Ben Shields will share innovative best practices from the business of sports that are relevant to any consumer-driven enterprise.
New digital technologies, pervasive social media and countless apps have transformed the traditional B to C marketing templates. Now, businesses and consumers can increasingly co-create content, experiences and value. And often these collaborations yield persuasive results. But to achieve this brand leverage, businesses have to be willing to give up some control and also engage, creatively, with customers on a more personal level. Under what circumstances does it make sense for business to loosen brand control and what energy and investment is required of consumers to enable co-creation to make an impact? Similarly, what needs to be considered as we enter the world of co-decision making, in which customers have to allow apps to control selection and decisions?
ILP members, many of them Fortune 1000 companies, increasingly want to meet with MIT startups, to scout, to discuss, to partner, to invest, and more. Responding to that need, ILP’s Startup Initiative will boost our current database of near 1000 MIT startups. Going forward, the intent is to provide a web platform to gather real time developments, advertise opportunities and do more but also better matching. We are currently seeking feedback from the wider MIT innovation ecosystem on how we should proceed. There will be a stand at the Startup Exhibit where we can take questions and you can give your input. We're looking for input from both MIT startups and ILP members.
Retailers know it is crucial to optimize the timing and promotion of sales to maximize profit. But how do you process the large amounts of data necessary to determine optimal pricing and timing? Left to the intuition of product managers, retailers risk missing out, but a new method created by Georgia Perakis and her team of PhD students in collaboration with Oracle RGBU, aims to change that. Using models that analyze price effects, promotion effects, and general consumer behavior data, this approach has the potential to help retailers increase their profits by an average of 3-10 percent. In a world of slim profit margins and ever-increasing competition, this could be a game changer for retailers in any industry.
Today’s consumers are better equipped with access to information than any in history, but we don’t always use that information at critical moments. By leveraging the power of augmented reality and the techniques that advertisers use to influence consumers, our personal devices can become personal coaches, not only helping inform our decisions but helping improve our decisions. By playing an expanded role in day-to-day decision-making, smart phones and wearable technologies can encourage consumers towards less impulsive, more deliberate, and ultimately more satisfying choices.