Tag: Health sciences and technology

Computational model helps with diabetes drug design

For diabetes patients who must give themselves frequent insulin injections, the risk of low blood sugar can be life-threatening. A potential solution is a type of engineered insulin that circulates in the body and springs into action only when needed. Researchers working on this type of “glucose-responsive insulin” (GRI) hope that it could be injected […]

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An implantable device could enable injection-free control of diabetes

One promising approach to treating Type 1 diabetes is implanting pancreatic islet cells that can produce insulin when needed, which can free patients from giving themselves frequent insulin injections. However, one major obstacle to this approach is that once the cells are implanted, they eventually run out of oxygen and stop producing insulin. To overcome […]

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Future science at the molecular level

Innovating at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and engineering, Professor Brad Pentelute and the Pentelute Lab at MIT invent new chemistry, platforms, and techniques that might revolutionize therapeutics. Their formula in brief: nature-inspired research that begins at the molecular level, infused with state-of-the-art machine learning and automation, aimed at solving real-world problems. Take, for example, […]

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How an archeological approach can help leverage biased data in AI to improve medicine

The classic computer science adage “garbage in, garbage out” lacks nuance when it comes to understanding biased medical data, argue computer science and bioethics professors from MIT, Johns Hopkins University, and the Alan Turing Institute in a new opinion piece published in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The rising […]

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A. Michael West: Advancing human-robot interactions in health care

An accomplished MIT student researcher in health care robotics, with many scholarship and fellowship awards to his name, A. Michael West is nonchalant about how he chose his path. “I kind of fell into it,” the mechanical engineering PhD candidate says, adding that growing up in suburban California, he was social, athletic — and good […]

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Kimberly Rose Bennett awarded HHMI Gilliam Fellowship

Kimberly Rose Bennett, a PhD candidate in the Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) program within the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), has been selected by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to be one of the 50 Gilliam Fellows for 2023. Bennett is the first HST student to receive this prestigious fellowship. The […]

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Laser-based system achieves noncontact medical ultrasound imaging

Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and their collaborators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Ultrasound Research and Translation (CURT) have developed a new medical imaging device: the Noncontact Laser Ultrasound (NCLUS). This laser-based ultrasound system provides images of interior body features such as organs, fat, muscle, tendons, and blood vessels. The system also measures […]

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How the body’s cells work together in response to infection

Constantine Tzouanas aims to deconstruct, understand, and engineer complex biological systems by studying their smallest units — individual cells. “The analogy I like to use is whenever you see a broken car, it’s very easy to describe that the windshield is broken, the bumper is crumpled,” says the fourth-year PhD candidate. “It’s much harder to […]

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