Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed and demonstrated a small, ingestible voltaic cell that is sustained by the acidic fluids in the stomach.

Engineers harness stomach acid to power tiny sensors

Ingestible electronic devices could monitor physiological conditions or deliver drugs.

February 6, 2017

MIT Professor Tom Leighton (left) and the late Danny Lewin SM '97 have been named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Professor Tom Leighton and Danny Lewin SM ’98 named to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Akamai founders honored for applying algorithms to solve web congestion.

February 2, 2017

PhD candidate Mohammad Ghassemi (left) and graduate student Tuka Alhanai's system can detect the tone of a conversation using a wearable device.

Wearable AI system can detect a conversation's tone

Coupled with audio and vital-sign data, deep-learning system could someday serve as a “social coach” for people with anxiety or Asperger’s.

February 1, 2017

Dawn Wendell, senior lecturer in mechanical engineering, helps a student during the motor debugging class in 6.A01 (Mens et Manus: Building on the Science Core).

Adding hands-on practice to science and engineering classes

A new advising seminar incorporates making and other types of hands-on learning to enhance first-year required courses.

January 30, 2017

“Everybody said it was going to be too hard, that you’d have to change the whole compiler,” MIT professor Charles E. Leiserson says. “And these guys basically showed that conventional wisdom to be flat-out wrong.”

Optimizing code

Modifying the “middle end” of a popular compiler yields more-efficient parallel programs.

January 30, 2017

At StartMIT Innovation Night, innovators discuss their founders’ journeys and the impact they’ve made along the way.

StartMIT’s Innovation Night

Innovators from a range of fields discuss their pioneering work and their founders’ journey.

January 26, 2017

Artist's rendering of the MIT Hyperloop pod

Featured video: MIT Hyperloop

MIT is one of 30 student teams testing high-speed concept pods as part of a SpaceX Hyperloop competition.

January 25, 2017

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have designed a new system that automatically handles caching of database queries for web applications written in the web-programming language Ur/Web.

Faster websites with fewer bugs

System that automatically handles database caching in server farms increases speed and reliability.

January 20, 2017

Professor Daniela Rus stands with autonomous SMART vehicles on the MIT campus.

SMART automation

MIT Professor Daniela Rus combines automation and mobility to create a smarter world.

January 19, 2017

A new system called Data Civilizer automatically finds connections among many different data tables and allows users to perform database-style queries across all of them. The results of the queries can then be saved as new, orderly data sets that may draw information from dozens or even thousands of different tables.

Taming data

System finds and links related data scattered across digital files, for easy querying and filtering.

January 19, 2017

The 2017 Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize from the National Academy of Engineering was awarded to MIT Professor James Fujimoto, alumnus and former research scientist Eric Swanson SM '84, Adolf F. Fercher, Christoph Hitzenberger, and David Huang for their work on optical coherence tomography.

Two from MIT share National Academy of Engineering Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize

Professor James Fujimoto, Eric Swanson SM '84, and collaborators lauded for optical coherence tomography.

January 13, 2017

New MOOC study explores 290 MIT and Harvard online courses, a quarter-million certifications, 4.5 million participants, and 28 million participant-hours.

Study of MOOCs offers insights into online learner engagement and behavior

New report, based on four years of data from edX, represents one of the largest surveys of massive open online courses to date.

January 12, 2017

MapD is a type of commonly used database-management system modified to run on GPUs instead of CPUs, which power most traditional database-management systems. MapD can process billions of data points in milliseconds, making it 100 times faster than those traditional systems, and visualizes that data near instantaneously.

Split-second data mapping

New type of database-analytics platform queries and maps billions of data points in milliseconds.

January 11, 2017

Kevin Patrick Simon (left) sets solar panels in place with villagers at a pilot site in Jharkhand, India. Simon, an MIT PhD candidate in mechanical engineering, is studying solar irrigation.

How engineering students are seeking to solve major food and water security problems

Students with a common passion for food and water security share their research at the MIT Water and Food Security Symposium.

January 9, 2017

“There’s a close correspondence between the behavior of networks of computers or other devices like mobile phones and that of biological systems,” says MIT professor Nancy Lynch. “We’re trying to find problems that can benefit from this distributed-computing perspective, focusing on algorithms for which we can prove mathematical properties.”

Model sheds light on purpose of inhibitory neurons

Study suggests computational role for neurons that prevent other neurons from firing.