In the Media

Prof. Steven B. Leeb met with Sharon Burke, assistant secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Plans and Programs, about the non-intrusive load monitor developed at MIT, during Burke's visit to the Army Base Camp Integration Laboratory at Fort Devens, Mass. The monitor can look at an energy grid and break down energy use by individual devices plugged into a system. Read more.

Until now the theoretical and much studied quasiparticle known as the exciton — responsible for the transfer of energy within devices such as solar cells, LEDs, and semiconductor circuits — has never been observed in action. Now researchers in the Center for EXcitonics in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at MIT including EECS professors Marc Baldo and Vladimir Bulovic, and investigators at the City College of New York have imaged excitons' motions directly. Read more.

Researchers at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL) including Anantha Chandrakasan, the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering, recent EECS PhD graduate Marcus Yip, EECS graduate student Rui Jin and research scientist Nathan Ickes, together with physicians from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI), have developed a new, low-power signal-processing chip that could lead to a cochlear implant that requires no external hardware. The implant would be wirelessly recharged -- taking just two minutes -- and would run for about eight hours on each charge. Read more.

Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus, Institute professor emerita and faculty member in the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Physics Departments, received the Materials Research Society Von Hippel Award in recognition of her work and close association with Prof. Von Hippel. Read more.

"There's a very strong need for that computer to turn electrical signals into optical signals very efficiently," Dirk Englund the Jamieson Career Development Assistant Professor in the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department explained to Marketplace Tech. Englund was approached to discuss his work in the Quantum Photonics Laboratory, where computer chips made of graphene and silicon are encouraging information to move near the speed of light. Read more.

Mehmet Fatih Yanik, associate professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering at MIT and head of the High-Throughput Neurotechnology Group based in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) has created his life's work by combining his training in physics and engineering with his passion for understanding the complexities of the human nervous system and how to determine therapeutics for neurological disorders. Read more...

Joel Voldman engineers cutting-edge approaches to stem cell signaling, point of care therapeutics, and neuroengineering. In the never-ending mega study of how biological systems work, Joel Voldman’s mission is to understand the most basic interactions between single cells. To achieve that, he applies the power of microfluidics to isolate the actions and behaviors of single cells and the interactions between cells.

Jeffrey Shapiro, the Julius A. Stratton Professor of Electrical Engineering working with members of the Optical and Quantum Communications Group of which he is a co-director in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT has demonstrated experimentally the effectiveness of a new quantum communication protocol. The group has shown in a series of papers the system's effectiveness in both security (against passive eavesdropping) and can be used for greater distances than the current quantum key distribution (QKD).

Dana Weinstein, the Steven G. ('68) and Renee Finn Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Laura Popa, a graduate student in physics at the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL) have developed a new method for manufacturing hardware-based radio-signal filtration. Their work should improve filtration performance while enabling 14 times as many filters per chip.

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.

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. Read more.

Researchers in the lab of Anantha Chandrakasan, the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering, including Rahul Rithe, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, have developed a chip which can perform professional quality enhancements of photographs quickly and without draining power on smartphone and digital cameras--cutting out the need for added energy- and time-consuming computational photography systems.