• In a series of communications to the MIT community, President L. Rafael Reif announced a new MIT Innovation Initiative for which he appointed Vladimir Bulovic, director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories, as the MIT School of Engineering's Associate Dean for Innovation. Sloan School professor Fiona Murray will co-lead the Innovation Initiative as MIT Sloan's Associate Dean for Innovation. Jesus del Alamo, Donner Professor of Science in the EECS Department and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, has been named director of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL). Additionally, President Reif announced that current MIT Chancellor (and former EECS department head) Eric Grimson will assume the new ad hoc role as Chancellor for Academic Advancement — reflecting his key role in communicating MIT’s fundraising priorities with alumni and donors around the world as the Institute takes on a multiyear capital campaign. Martin Schmidt, associate provost will serve as acting provost. Read more.
  • Department Head Chandrakasan announced today that the Faculty Research and Innovation Fellowship (FRIF) recipients for 2013–2014 are Marc Baldo, Regina Barzilay, Samuel Madden, and David Perreault. The FRIF is given to recognize senior EECS faculty members for outstanding research contributions and international leadership in their fields. Each Fellow will receive a three-year award totaling $60k (i.e., $20k per year for 3 years) to be used at the faculty member’s discretion for support of new or ongoing research projects.
  • EECS Department Head Anantha Chandrakasan announced today the appointment of Ron Rivest as the new holder of the Vannevar Bush Professorship. The Bush Chair is an Institute-wide professorship established in 1982 as a memorial to one of the outstanding scientists and engineers of the twentieth century.
  • Attention EECS students! Have you already done a UROP or are you currently a SuperUROP or MEng or graduate student who wants to explore entrepreneurship? The EECS Department is running its first-ever IAP Bootcamp for EECS Entrepreneurs and Innovators, titled Start6 from Jan. 13 - 29, 2014. If you have developed an idea that you would like to carry to the startup level, please come to the Start6 Info Session at 5pm on Nov. 5 in Grier B (34-401B). Read more.
  • Department Head Anantha Chandrakasan recently announced the appointments of Vivienne Sze as the Emanuel E. Landsman (1958) Career Development Assistant Professor and Vinod Vaikuntanathan as the Steven and Renee Finn Career Development Assistant Professor. Read more.
  • SuperUROP in its second year features guest speakers Susan Hockfield and Ray Stata at its Sept. 26 reception. The MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) held a kickoff reception at the Stata Center on Sept. 26 for 80 of its juniors and seniors who recently started their yearlong participation in the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (or SuperUROP). Speakers at the reception praised SuperUROP, now in its second year, for continuing to raise the bar at MIT for undergraduate research and innovation, while fostering collaboration between faculty and industry. Read more.
  • MIT EECS faculty members in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab CSAIL Frans Kaashoek, Nickolai Zeldovich and Armando Solar-Lezama along with EECS graduate student Xi Wang have created a system they call Stack which will automatically scan programmer's code to avoid compilers from tossing bits of code that might not appear essential. Read more.
  • Self-assembling robots were dismissed even by Daniela Rus, professor of computer science and engineering and director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), until she worked again with former MIT EECS senior John Romanishin, now a research scientist in CSAIL and the one who was convinced (since his undergraduate days) that it could be done. They will present their work on the new self-propelled robots at the IEEE RSJ International conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Read more.
  • When Anantha Chandrakasan, the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering, took the helm of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) in 2011, he quickly set two big ideas into motion. One was to make the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) more appealing to EECS majors. The goal was to offer Course 6 undergraduates more research options within the department, as well as chances to work on longer-term, sustained projects. The other was to form the Undergraduate Student Advisory Group in EECS (USAGE) to help him understand the student perspective. Read more.
  • Imagine building a cellphone app that could be instantaneously used in the face of a flood or hurricane — where not only the app creator but many others could jump in to add needed ways for data to be shared as needed. Members of the Decentralized Information Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) presented their work at the Workshop on Semantic Cities last month in Beijing.