In the Media

A new mechanism that could help explain the remarkable sensitivity and exquisite frequency selectivity of our sense of hearing has been discovered by Dennis Freeman, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) Principal Investigator in the Micromechanics Group, in collaboration with Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari, post-doctoral associate in the RLE.

Collin Stultz, faculty member of both the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology and MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science has lead a recent study of one of the proteins associated with neurological diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Using computational modeling, Stultz has proposed solutions to a controversy over the structure of alpha synuclein that could lead to development of new more effective treatments. Read more...

Building an effective Photovoltaic cell (PV) that both collects enough solar energy and carries the charge efficiently has held back the use of quantum dots despite their relative ease of production. Now a multi-disciplinary team involving researchers from the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the MIT Materials Science and Engineering and the MIT Chemistry Departments has designed a way to allow quick extraction of charge yet enough depth for absorption of energy to provide a 50 percent boost in the current generated by the solar cell, and a 35 percent increase in overall efficiency.

Researchers at the High Throughput Neurotechnology Group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) have built an automated system that can rapidly produce 3-D, micron-resolution images of thousands of zebrafish larvae and precisely analyze their physical traits. The system, described in the Feb. 12 edition of Nature Communications, offers a comprehensive view of how potential drugs affect vertebrates, says Professor Mehmet Fatih Yanik, senior author of the paper.

Trying to build a new circuit that would use an emerging technology called compressed sensing has taken on a renewed focus under the work of members of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT including EECS graduate student Omid Abari. With researchers in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT (RLE) and in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) Obari is seeking to balance theory with chip building realities using new evaluation algorithms to allow creation of the ideal circuit.

EECS researchers including professors Vladimir Bulovic, Jing Kong and Mildred Dresselhaus and postdoctoral associate Hyesung Park and graduate student Joel Jean have joined MIT colleagues including associate professor of materials science and engineering Silvija Gradecak and postdoctoral associate Sehoon Chang, to produce a new kind of flexible and solar cell based on graphene paired with nanowires and quantum dots. This work could rival the current use of silicon crystals or indium tin oxide (ITO) and is predicted to be scalable for alternative use to the silicon or ITO models.

Gregory Wornell, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) has teamed with former RLE member Dr. Maryam Shanechi, who has recently earned her doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, Prof. Emery Brown of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT, and neurosurgeon Dr. Ziv Williams at Massachusetts General Hospital to develop the first instance of an "intelligent" Brain-Motor Interface, which uses specially designed advanced neural decoding algorithms to decode in advance a sequence of planned movements from neural activity in the premotor cortex.

Calling it a glimpse into the future, technology news website CRN has hailed MIT EECS/CSAIL faculty and the new Wireless@MIT center as the source for seven new technologies that will impact (favorably) our daily lives. Read more...

As reported by the Champalimaud Foundation, the 2012 António Champalimaud Vision Award was given to several researchers including Professor James G. Fujimoto, Research Laboratory of Electronics affiliate Eric A. Swanson for the creation and development of optical coherence tomography (OCT). Fujimoto, the Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering, Swanson, and their collaborators were recognized for the major role that OCT now plays in the diagnosis and treatment of the most important blinding diseases of the industrialized world: macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma. Currently, it is estimated that more than 40 million OCT diagnostic procedures are performed worldwide annually.

Timothy K. Lu, EECS assistant professor and principal investigator with the MIT Research Lab of Electronics, RLE, is one of five MIT members selected for the presidential early career award for Scientists and Engineers - and one of 96 selected for this honor nationwide. Lu is cited for his contributions in establishing innovative synthetic biology platforms and for his pioneering applications of synthetic biology to materials science, nanotechnology and infectious diseases.

Mildred Spiewak Dresselhaus, a professor of physics and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walks with a very large carbon footprint, and in her case it’s a good thing. For more than half a century, Dr. Dresselhaus has studied the fundamental properties of carbon.