Research

Timothy K. Lu, Assistant Professor leading the Synthetic Biology Group in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Department of Biological Engineering and principal investigator in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), has been selected for a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in support of work to understand biological cells as state machines leading to insights into natural biological systems and synthetic gene circuits. Read more.

Manolis Kellis, associate professor of computer science at MIT has teamed with a former CSAIL postdoc to combine work developing algorithms that predict how strands of RNA are likely to unfold with a team of computational biologists at MIT and with experimental biologists at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to identify biologically meaningful RNA folds within living cells. Published in Nature this week, this work shows promised for understanding RNA machinery -- a major avenue towards understanding genetic and biological function in living cells.

Along with 9 other finalists, EECS graduate student Cody Gilleland presented his dream research proposal in April to Regeneron. He was named inaugural recipient, based on his presentation to essentially bring Moore's law to early stage drug delivery by designing a new system for developing and validating drug targets (prior to mouse model trials).

Detecting early-stage malarial infection of blood cells is a diagnostic that has recently come closer to reality through the work of MIT's Anantha Chandrakasan, EECS Department Head, and Subra Suresh, former MIT Dean of Engineering, now president of Carnegie Mellon University. The work, which has been published Aug. 8 in the journal Lab on a Chip, is potentially applicable to detecting other infections and diseases.

James Fujimoto, the Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT has been selected for the 2014 IEEE Photonics Award. The award, which is sponsored by the IEEE Photonics Society, is given in recognition of outstanding achievements in photonics. Prof. Fujimoto is cited “for pioneering the development and commercialization of optical coherence tomography for medical diagnostics.”

In a paper they are presenting this summer at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference, EECS graduate student Guha Balakrishnan and his advisors, both faculty members in the MIT EECS Department, John Guttag and Fredo Durand, describe a new algorithm they developed to measure the heart rates of people in video. The algorithm allows for analyzing the digital data for small imperceptible movements that are caused by the rush of blood from the heart's contractions. Data could ultimately aid in predicting heart disease.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty members and principal investigators in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) Tim Lu and Rahul Sarpeshkar have designed cells that exploit natural integral biochemical functions to make analog circuits to perform calculations and potentially act as pathogen sensors. The researchers, including lead author MIT postdoc Ramiz Daniel and microbiology graduate student Jacob Rubens have published their work in the May 15 online edition of Nature Biotechnology.

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...

Professor Peter Szolovits has been named the recipient of the 2013 Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence. The award is presented annually by the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) in honor of Morris F. Collen, a pioneer in the field. According to the ACMI, the award is the "highest honor in informatics that is presented by the American College of Medical Informatics to an individual whose personal commitment and dedication to biomedical informatics has made a lasting impression on healthcare and biomedicine.”

Timothy Lu, MIT assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and biological engineering working with members of the Synthetic Biology Group in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), has successfully created new synthetic biology circuits that combine memory and logic allowing potential control over production of cells to generate biofuels, drugs or other useful compounds. Read more...

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department Head Anantha Chandrakasan announced on Jan. 21, 2013, the appointment of Professor Gregory Wornell for the Sumitomo Electric Industries Professorship of Engineering. Greg Wornell is a recognized leader in the fields of signal processing and information theory.

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.