Tag: Computer science and technology

Doctors have more difficulty diagnosing disease when looking at images of darker skin

When diagnosing skin diseases based solely on images of a patient’s skin, doctors do not perform as well when the patient has darker skin, according to a new study from MIT researchers. The study, which included more than 1,000 dermatologists and general practitioners, found that dermatologists accurately characterized about 38 percent of the images they […]

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Creating new skills and new connections with MIT’s Quantitative Methods Workshop

Starting on New Year’s Day, when many people were still clinging to holiday revelry, scores of students and faculty members from about a dozen partner universities instead flipped open their laptops for MIT’s Quantitative Methods Workshop, a jam-packed, weeklong introduction to how computational and mathematical techniques can be applied to neuroscience and biology research. But don’t […]

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MIT, Applied Materials, and the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition Hub to bring 200mm advanced research capabilities to MIT.nano

The following is a joint announcement from MIT and Applied Materials, Inc. MIT and Applied Materials, Inc., announced an agreement today that, together with a grant to MIT from the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition (NEMC) Hub, commits more than $40 million of estimated private and public investment to add advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities to MIT.nano, […]

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Study: Smart devices’ ambient light sensors pose imaging privacy risk

In George Orwell’s novel “1984,” Big Brother watches citizens through two-way, TV-like telescreens to surveil citizens without any cameras. In a similar fashion, our current smart devices contain ambient light sensors, which open the door to a different threat: hackers. These passive, seemingly innocuous smartphone components receive light from the environment and adjust the screen’s […]

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Entrepreneur creates career pathways with MIT OpenCourseWare

When June Odongo interviewed early-career electrical engineer Cynthia Wacheke for a software engineering position at her company, Wacheke lacked knowledge of computer science theory but showed potential in complex problem-solving. Determined to give Wacheke a shot, Odongo turned to MIT OpenCourseWare to create a six-month “bridging course” modeled after the classes she once took as […]

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Researchers demonstrate rapid 3D printing with liquid metal

MIT researchers have developed an additive manufacturing technique that can print rapidly with liquid metal, producing large-scale parts like table legs and chair frames in a matter of minutes. Their technique, called liquid metal printing (LMP), involves depositing molten aluminum along a predefined path into a bed of tiny glass beads. The aluminum quickly hardens […]

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What to do about AI in health?

Before a drug is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it must demonstrate both safety and efficacy. However, the FDA does not require an understanding a drug’s mechanism of action for approval. This acceptance of results without explanation raises the question of whether the “black box” decision-making process of a safe and […]

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New hope for early pancreatic cancer intervention via AI-based risk prediction

The first documented case of pancreatic cancer dates back to the 18th century. Since then, researchers have undertaken a protracted and challenging odyssey to understand the elusive and deadly disease. To date, there is no better cancer treatment than early intervention. Unfortunately, the pancreas, nestled deep within the abdomen, is particularly elusive for early detection.  […]

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Reasoning and reliability in AI

In order for natural language to be an effective form of communication, the parties involved need to be able to understand words and their context, assume that the content is largely shared in good faith and is trustworthy, reason about the information being shared, and then apply it to real-world scenarios. MIT PhD students interning with […]

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Self-powered sensor automatically harvests magnetic energy

MIT researchers have developed a battery-free, self-powered sensor that can harvest energy from its environment. Because it requires no battery that must be recharged or replaced, and because it requires no special wiring, such a sensor could be embedded in a hard-to-reach place, like inside the inner workings of a ship’s engine. There, it could […]

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Multiple AI models help robots execute complex plans more transparently

Your daily to-do list is likely pretty straightforward: wash the dishes, buy groceries, and other minutiae. It’s unlikely you wrote out “pick up the first dirty dish,” or “wash that plate with a sponge,” because each of these miniature steps within the chore feels intuitive. While we can routinely complete each step without much thought, […]

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Co-creating climate futures with real-time data and spatial storytelling

Virtual story worlds and game engines aren’t just for video games anymore. They are now tools for scientists and storytellers to digitally twin existing physical spaces and then turn them into vessels to dream up speculative climate stories and build collective designs of the future. That’s the theory and practice behind the MIT WORLDING initiative. […]

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Technique could efficiently solve partial differential equations for numerous applications

In fields such as physics and engineering, partial differential equations (PDEs) are used to model complex physical processes to generate insight into how some of the most complicated physical and natural systems in the world function. To solve these difficult equations, researchers use high-fidelity numerical solvers, which can be very time-consuming and computationally expensive to […]

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AI agents help explain other AI systems

Explaining the behavior of trained neural networks remains a compelling puzzle, especially as these models grow in size and sophistication. Like other scientific challenges throughout history, reverse-engineering how artificial intelligence systems work requires a substantial amount of experimentation: making hypotheses, intervening on behavior, and even dissecting large networks to examine individual neurons. To date, most […]

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Complex, unfamiliar sentences make the brain’s language network work harder

With help from an artificial language network, MIT neuroscientists have discovered what kind of sentences are most likely to fire up the brain’s key language processing centers. The new study reveals that sentences that are more complex, either because of unusual grammar or unexpected meaning, generate stronger responses in these language processing centers. Sentences that […]

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Building technology that empowers city residents

Kwesi Afrifa came to MIT from his hometown of Accra, Ghana, in 2020 to pursue an interdisciplinary major in urban planning and computer science. Growing up amid the many moving parts of a large, densely populated city, he had often observed aspects of urban life that could be made more efficient. He decided to apply […]

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MIT in the media: 2023 in review

It was an eventful trip around the sun for MIT this year, from President Sally Kornbluth’s inauguration and Mark Rober’s Commencement address to Professor Moungi Bawendi winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2023 MIT researchers made key advances, detecting a dying star swallowing a planet, exploring the frontiers of artificial intelligence, creating clean energy […]

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A flexible solution to help artists improve animation

Artists who bring to life heroes and villains in animated movies and video games could have more control over their animations, thanks to a new technique introduced by MIT researchers. Their method generates mathematical functions known as barycentric coordinates, which define how 2D and 3D shapes can bend, stretch, and move through space. For example, […]

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“MIT can give you ‘superpowers’”

Speaking at the virtual MITx MicroMasters Program Joint Completion Celebration last summer, Diogo da Silva Branco Magalhães described watching a Spider-Man movie with his 8-year-old son and realizing that his son thought MIT was a fictional entity that existed only in the Marvel universe. “I had to tell him that MIT also exists in the […]

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Image recognition accuracy: An unseen challenge confounding today’s AI

Imagine you are scrolling through the photos on your phone and you come across an image that at first you can’t recognize. It looks like maybe something fuzzy on the couch; could it be a pillow or a coat? After a couple of seconds it clicks — of course! That ball of fluff is your […]

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Three MIT students selected as inaugural MIT-Pillar AI Collective Fellows

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

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Closing the design-to-manufacturing gap for optical devices

Photolithography involves manipulating light to precisely etch features onto a surface, and is commonly used to fabricate computer chips and optical devices like lenses. But tiny deviations during the manufacturing process often cause these devices to fall short of their designers’ intentions. To help close this design-to-manufacturing gap, researchers from MIT and the Chinese University […]

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A computer scientist pushes the boundaries of geometry

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek mathematician Euclid, known to many as the father of geometry, changed the way we think about shapes. Building off those ancient foundations and millennia of mathematical progress since, Justin Solomon is using modern geometric techniques to solve thorny problems that often seem to have nothing to do with […]

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Boosting faith in the authenticity of open source software

Open source software — software that is freely distributed, along with its source code, so that copies, additions, or modifications can be readily made — is “everywhere,” to quote the 2023 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report. Ninety-six percent of the computer programs used by major industries include open source software, and 76 percent […]

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Two from MIT named 2024 Marshall Scholars

Anushree Chaudhuri and Rupert Li have won Marshall Scholarships, a prestigious British government-funded fellowship that offers exceptional American students the opportunity to pursue several years of graduate study in any field at any university in the United Kingdom. Up to 50 scholarships are awarded each year by the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. The students were […]

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MIT group releases white papers on governance of AI

Providing a resource for U.S. policymakers, a committee of MIT leaders and scholars has released a set of policy briefs that outlines a framework for the governance of artificial intelligence. The approach includes extending current regulatory and liability approaches in pursuit of a practical way to oversee AI. The aim of the papers is to […]

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Miranda McClellan ’18, MEng ’19 awarded 2025 Schwarzman Scholarship

MIT alumna Miranda McClellan ’18, MEng ’19 has been named a 2025 Schwarzman Scholar. In August 2024, she will join the program’s 150 scholars arriving from 43 countries and 114 universities from around the world. The Class of 2025 Scholars were selected from a pool of over 4,000 applicants. They will attend a one-year fully […]

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Automated system teaches users when to collaborate with an AI assistant

Artificial intelligence models that pick out patterns in images can often do so better than human eyes — but not always. If a radiologist is using an AI model to help her determine whether a patient’s X-rays show signs of pneumonia, when should she trust the model’s advice and when should she ignore it? A […]

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AI accelerates problem-solving in complex scenarios

While Santa Claus may have a magical sleigh and nine plucky reindeer to help him deliver presents, for companies like FedEx, the optimization problem of efficiently routing holiday packages is so complicated that they often employ specialized software to find a solution. This software, called a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) solver, splits a massive optimization […]

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