A lecture series on "Grand Challenges in Information Systems and Technology for the 21st Century" is the cornerstone of a conference October 25 celebrating the fifth anniversary of MIT's Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff Laboratory for Information Systems and Technology. A meeting the following day will address information technology in health care. All members of the MIT community are invited.
In the Wednesday series, which will run from 1-3:30pm in Rm 4-163, six MIT researchers will present their latest research and discuss future aspirations in the cutting-edge research areas of information technology. Topics range from quantum computing and terabit switchers to future supply chains, distribution systems and space explorer robots in the year 2040. An open house from 3:30-5:30pm in Rm 1-010 will feature demonstrations of technologies in these and other areas, such as bioinstrumentation, telemed-icine, nano-technology, applied optics and intelligent robots.
The following day, Thursday, Oct. 26, the lab will hold a meeting for its Home Automation and Healthcare Consortium. From 8:30am-12pm participating faculty and staff will describe their projects in Twenty Chimneys at the Stratton Student Center. Topics range from wireless Internet, a wearable computer mouse and collective vision to tetherless health monitoring and robotic elder care. Demonstrations of these projects will be presented in Rms 1-004 and 3-144 from 1:15-4:30pm. Persons wishing to attend the consortium meeting must preregister with Professor Harry Asada at asada@mit.edu.
The d'Arbeloff Laboratory was established in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1995 based on a generous donation from Brit (SM 1961) and Alex d'Arbeloff (SB 1949), chair of the MIT Corporation. The mission of the d'Arbeloff Laboratory has been cross-disciplinary research and education where "information" is the catalyst that opens up new possibilities in mechanical engineering.
The d'Arbeloff Lab's Home Automation and Healthcare Consortium is an industrial research consortium led by Professor Asada, Ford Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the d'Arbeloff Lab, and Professor Ian Hunter, Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering and co-director of the lab. Twenty sponsors worldwide have participated in the HAHC Consortium in the last five years.
A second consortium in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Auto ID Center, is led by Professor Kai-Yeung (Sunny) Siu, d'Arbeloff Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor Sanjay Sarma, Cecil and Ida Green Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. The focus of the Auto ID Center is Information Technology applications to distribution systems using intelligent barcodes. The center is supported by the Unified Code Council and several industrial sponsors.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 18, 2000.
