School of Engineering

Alumnus Vikas Enti ‘20, founder of Reframe Systems, speaks to Boston 25 about his company’s work aimed at lowering the time and costs of home building with their new system that they used to robotically fabricate a residential building in Somerville. “We went from starting foundation work to handing keys over to our customer in about 180 days,” says Enti. “It would typically take about 18 months to build a structure like this in cities like Somerville—it's almost three times faster. Our units also cost 20% lower than traditional construction costs.” 

Smithsonian Magazine’s Sarah Kuta highlights Lecturer Franco Rossi’s work identifying the name of ancient Maya mathematician Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-chested fox,” inscribed in a chamber with murals, hieroglyphs and mathematical texts. One of Waax’s equations, linking the cycles of Mars and Venus to units of time in the Maya calendar, is “meant to concisely and meaningfully show the relationship between these two planets and human counts of time in ways that could then be applied to political ceremony, predictive astronomy and understandings of seasonality,” says Rossi. 

Fast Company’s Adele Peters spotlights “Project Obsidian,” a new geothermal power plant developed by MIT spinout Quaise Energy. The findings of former Senior Research Engineer Paul Woskov helped Quaise develop their tech. “Paul’s epiphany was realizing that if we can use the same energy to heat plasmas to millions of degrees Celsius to get fusion, why not use that for heating and drilling through rock at a much more modest temperature?” says Matthew Houde, Quaise co-founder.  

Prof. Raphael Zufferey and his colleagues developed a winged robot that can swim underwater and fly through the air, writes New York Times reporter K.R. Callaway. The robot was inspired by data from nearly 100 species of diving birds. “There was a very good chance that this [design] would have not been possible at all,” says Zufferey. “I took that risk because I believed that if birds could do it, with good engineering we might also be able to.” 

Lecturer Franco Rossi is spotlighted by National Geographic reporter Taylor Mitchell Brown for deciphering the name of ancient Maya mathematician, Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox,” found inscribed in the mural room at the Maya site of Xultún in Guatemala. “You can look at some of these texts forever, and it won't click,” says Rossi. “Then, one day you see it, and it just clicks.” 

In a Science article by reporter Laura Martín Agudelo, Lecturer Franco Rossi delves into the discovery of the autograph of the ancient Maya mathematician, Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox” in Xultun, Guatemala. “[T]here’s good evidence for codex book production [at Xultun],” says Rossi. “So if there’s going to be a name … this would be the most logical place.” 

Scientific American’s Joseph Howlett highlights how Lecturer Franco Rossi helped discover the name of ancient Maya mathematician, Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox,” which was inscribed in a 1,000-year-old chamber beneath Guatemala. “Rossi showed how the markings on a particular scrap of plaster could be seen as a sort of celestial chronology; the team then reconstructed how the scraps’ symbols tabulated the time it took for planets such as Mars and Venus to come back to the same position, relative to the sun,” writes Howlett.  

MIT researchers have created a new building design model that could enable engineers to construct buildings and bridges that use less materials, writes Tech Briefs’ Andrew Corselli. “Traditional topology optimization essentially starts with a blank space and tries to figure out at each point in this blank space: ‘Should there be material,’ ‘should there not be material’ from an efficiency standpoint,” says Prof. Josephine Carstensen. “Our approach populates the space with a bunch of lines that are instead candidates for ‘should there be material’ or ‘should there not be material.’ By using this line approach, we have the opportunity to have more control.” 

To explain the longevity of a 1,900-year-old latrine, Scientific American’s Sam Macdonald highlights a study by Prof. Admir Masic that found the bright white chunks, or lime clasts, in Roman concrete may help preserve ancient structures. Masic explains that the findings strengthen “the idea that carbonates are more dynamic in these systems and play a fundamental role, not a marginal one.”  

An article by ZME Science reporter Jordan Strickler showcases FAAV, the flapping-wing aerial-aquatic vehicle, by Assistant Prof. Raphael Zufferey that can dive underwater and take flight like an aquatic bird in order to take underwater measurements and samples. “Our dream vision is for oceanographers, marine biologists, and members of coastal communities to launch this robot from a boat, or from shore, and it would fly close to the area of interest, such as an iceberg or a port facility, or over a pod of whales,” says Zufferey.  

NPR’s Ari Daniel features a new, winged robot by Assistant Prof. Raphael Zufferey that can swim and fly like a diving bird. "Thinking of a wing that could operate in both [air and water] somewhat efficiently seems implausible," Zufferey recalls thinking. He plans to use the robot for a range of applications, including monitoring harmful algal blooms, fish stocks, and coastal erosion.  

Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian has developed a satellite equipped with specialized neutron detectors that he hopes will fill the gaps in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons in space without a way to verify satellites are not carrying them. “[I]f the concept proves to be practical enough to someone in charge, it could finally give us a way to verify that there really aren’t any nukes floating precariously over our heads,” writes Luis Prada for Vice. 

Financial Times reporter Michael Peel features CubeSat, a proposed satellite sensor by Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian, able to identify hidden nuclear weapons in space.  “If one state suspects another of placing a nuclear weapon in orbit, the absence of a verification mechanism makes the crisis harder to manage,” says Danagoulian. “If a bad-faith actor knows that their attempt will be discovered via inspection, they will be more likely to decide it's not worth pursuing.” 

Gizmodo’s Ellyn Lapointe reports on a new paper from Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian, which offers a  solution to verifying satellites aren’t carrying hidden nuclear weapons in space: an inspector satellite able to indicate the presence of uranium from neutron signals via sensor technology. Danagoulian’s proposal seeks to fill the gaps of The Outer Space Treaty (OST), established in 1967 and signed by 118 countries to ban nuclear weapons in space, which “has always lacked robust means of verification for space-based nuclear threats,” says Danagoulian. 

In a new study, Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian proposes a satellite-based sensor that could monitor suspicious craft for signs of nuclear activity in space with 99% accuracy, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “You can fake intelligence, but you can’t fake physics,” says Danagoulian. “The goal right now is to get national labs to use this work for their own research, and to get policymakers to seriously consider this technology as a potential part of national technical means.”