Tag: Invention

A sprayable gel could make minimally invasive surgeries simpler and safer

More than 20 million Americans undergo colonoscopy screenings every year, and in many of those cases, doctors end up removing polyps that are 2 cm or larger and require additional care. This procedure has greatly reduced the overall incidence of colon cancer, but not without complications, as patients may experience gastrointestinal bleeding both during and […]

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Is this the future of fashion?

Until recently, bespoke tailoring — clothing made to a customer’s individual specifications — was the only way to have garments that provided the perfect fit for your physique. For most people, the cost of custom tailoring is prohibitive. But the invention of active fibers and innovative knitting processes is changing the textile industry. “We all […]

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Three Lincoln Laboratory inventions named IEEE Milestones

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) designated three historical MIT Lincoln Laboratory technologies as IEEE Milestones. The technologies are the Mode S air traffic control (ATC) radar beacon system, 193-nanometer (nm) photolithography, and the semiconductor laser. The latter recognition is shared by Lincoln Laboratory, General Electric, and IBM. As the world’s largest technical […]

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Cybersecurity software wins a 2024 Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence in Technology Transfer Award

The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) has selected MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Timely Address Space Randomization (TASR) as one of the recipients of their 2024 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award. This cybersecurity technology was transferred in 2019 and 2021 to two companies that develop cloud-based services. TASR has the potential to help harden many cloud-based servers and […]

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You Can Thank Black Folks for That: Inventions That Changed the Culture

Image: G/O Media Born on a Louisiana plantation to sharecropper parents, Sarah Breedlove became one of the most successful female entrepreneurs and the celebrated self-made millionaire we know today as Madam C.J. Walker. Advertisement When an issue with her scalp caused her to lose her hair, Walker used what she knew from her work as […]

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MIT students win national materials design competition

Two MIT undergrads recently took the top spot — and $2,000 in prize money to share — in the annual ASM Materials Education Foundation’s 2023 Undergraduate Design Competition. Louise Anderfaas and Darsh Grewal, students in Professor Gregory Olson’s class 3.041 (Computational Materials Design), worked with MIT postdoc mentor Margianna Tzini on the complex project. “This is probably the […]

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Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87 to deliver MIT’s 2024 Commencement address

Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87, an inventor and parallel entrepreneur with a penchant for bold ideas, will deliver the address at the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony on Thursday, May 30. Afeyan is the founder and CEO of the venture creation company Flagship Pioneering, which founds companies that build biotechnology platforms to transform human health and sustainability. Since […]

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Solving complex problems with technology and varied perspectives at Sphere Las Vegas

Something new, large, and round has dominated the Las Vegas skyline since July: Sphere. After debuting this summer, the state-of-the-art entertainment venue became instantly recognizable thanks to pictures and videos on social media and Reddit. Some of the most viral posts depict the 580,000-square-foot, fully programmable LED Exosphere projecting a giant yellow emoji that smiles, […]

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Cobalt-free batteries could power cars of the future

Many electric vehicles are powered by batteries that contain cobalt — a metal that carries high financial, environmental, and social costs. MIT researchers have now designed a battery material that could offer a more sustainable way to power electric cars. The new lithium-ion battery includes a cathode based on organic materials, instead of cobalt or […]

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The future of motorcycles could be hydrogen

MIT’s Electric Vehicle Team, which has a long record of building and racing innovative electric vehicles, including cars and motorcycles, in international professional-level competitions, is trying something very different this year: The team is building a hydrogen-powered electric motorcycle, using a fuel cell system, as a testbed for new hydrogen-based transportation. The motorcycle successfully underwent […]

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A new way to swiftly eliminate micropollutants from water

“Zwitterionic” might not be a word you come across every day, but for Professor Patrick Doyle of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, it’s a word that’s central to the technology his group is developing to remove micropollutants from water. Derived from the German word “zwitter,” meaning “hybrid,” “zwitterionic” molecules are those with an equal […]

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MIT community members elected to the National Academy of Inventors for 2023

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) recently announced the election of more than 160 individuals to their 2023 class of fellows. Among them are two members of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Professor Daniel G. Anderson and Principal Research Scientist Ana Jaklenec. In addition, 11 MIT alumni were also recognized. The highest professional […]

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2.009 gets “Wild!”

Things got “WILD!” in Kresge auditorium on Monday night — that was the theme for this year’s class 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes) senior capstone course, and it’s also a great word to describe of the energy of the capacity crowd gathered for the course’s annual product prototype launch event. The popular mechanical engineering course, known […]

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LIFT Program helps Cambridge youth become tomorrow’s changemakers

On Nov. 29, a team of young adults stood in front of a crowd at The Link coworking space in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and presented their idea for a smart, watch-like device that monitors a user’s vitals for signs of anger and prompts them with guided breathing exercises. The device would also connect via […]

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Students pitch transformative ideas in generative AI at MIT Ignite competition

This semester, students and postdocs across MIT were invited to submit ideas for the first-ever MIT Ignite: Generative AI Entrepreneurship Competition. Over 100 teams submitted proposals for startups that utilize generative artificial intelligence technologies to develop solutions across a diverse range of disciplines including human health, climate change, education, and workforce dynamics. On Oct. 30, […]

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Gitanjali Rao honored at White House “Girls Leading Change” celebration

MIT first-year student Gitanjali Rao was honored at the first Girls Leading Change celebration held at the White House on Oct. 11, which is also the International Day of the Girl Child. Fifteen young women were selected by the White House Gender Policy Council for their work as leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, authors, climate change […]

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Military students innovate technology solutions for US Special Operations Command

All eyes were on the robot-dog pacing the hangar on Hanscom Air Force Base. The robot was just one technology, among small drones, autonomous mapping vehicles, and virtual-environment simulators, set up for military cadets to interact with. The goal was to open cadets’ minds to possibilities. Over the next year, they will be applying such […]

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Shape-shifting fiber can produce morphing fabrics

Instead of needing a coat for each season, imagine having a jacket that would dynamically change shape so it becomes more insulating to keep you warm as the temperature drops. A programmable, actuating fiber developed by an interdisciplinary team of MIT researchers could someday make this vision a reality. Known as FibeRobo, the fiber contracts […]

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Eight high school teams named Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams for 2023-24

The Lemelson-MIT Program has announced the 2023-24 InvenTeams, eight teams of high school students, teachers, and mentors from across the country who each will receive $7,500 in grant funding and other support to build a technological invention to solve a problem of their own choosing. The students’ inventions are inspired by real-world problems they identified […]

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Four from MIT awarded National Medals of Technology, Science

James Fujimoto ’79, SM ’81, PhD ’84, the Elihu Thomson Professor in Electrical Engineering and principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and Subra Suresh ScD ’81, former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, have been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation and the National Medal of Science, respectively, the […]

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To excel at engineering design, generative AI must learn to innovate, study finds

ChatGPT and other deep generative models are proving to be uncanny mimics. These AI supermodels can churn out poems, finish symphonies, and create new videos and images by automatically learning from millions of examples of previous works. These enormously powerful and versatile tools excel at generating new content that resembles everything they’ve seen before. But […]

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A new way to integrate data with physical objects

To get a sense of what StructCode is all about, says Mustafa Doğa Doğan, think of Superman. Not the “faster than a speeding bullet” and “more powerful than a locomotive” version, but a Superman, or Superwoman, who sees the world differently from ordinary mortals — someone who can look around a room and glean all […]

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Quantum repeaters use defects in diamond to interconnect quantum systems

The popular children’s game of telephone is based on a simple premise: The starting player whispers a message into the ear of the next player. That second player then passes along the message to the third person and so on until the message reaches the final recipient, who relays it to the group aloud. Often, […]

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James Fujimoto, Eric Swanson, and David Huang win Lasker Award

The Lasker Foundation has named James Fujimoto ’79, SM ’81, PhD ’84, the Elihu Thomson Professor in Electrical Engineering and principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), a recipient of the 2023 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his groundbreaking work on optical coherence tomography. Fujimoto shares the award with Eric Swanson SM […]

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Four Lincoln Laboratory technologies win five 2023 R&D 100 awards

Ultrasound that doesn’t require touching patients. A web-based tool that reinvents crew scheduling for the Air Force. Cryptographic hardware that protects sensitive data. And the world’s first practical memory for quantum networking. These four technologies developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, either wholly or with collaborators, received 2023 R&D 100 Awards. The ultrasound technology also received […]

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System combines light and electrons to unlock faster, greener computing

Computing is at an inflection point. Moore’s Law, which predicts that the number of transistors on an electronic chip will double each year, is slowing down due to the physical limits of fitting more transistors on affordable microchips. These increases in computer power are slowing down as the demand grows for high-performance computers that can […]

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Smart pill can track key biological markers in real-time

Researchers from MIT, Boston University, and elsewhere report a smart pill the size of a blueberry that could be a game changer in the diagnosis and treatment of bowel diseases. That’s because it is the first technology compatible with ingestion that can automatically detect — and report on in real time — key biological molecules […]

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Harnessing hydrogen’s potential to address long-haul trucking emissions

The transportation of goods forms the basis of today’s globally distributed supply chains, and long-haul trucking is a central and critical link in this complex system. To meet climate goals around the world, it is necessary to develop decarbonized solutions to replace diesel powertrains, but given trucking’s indispensable and vast role, these solutions must be […]

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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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