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MIT researchers drew on kirigami, a variation of origami that involves cutting paper as well as folding it, to create a friction-boosting material that could be used to coat the bottom of your shoes, giving them a stronger grip on ice and other slippery surfaces.

Coatings for shoe bottoms could improve traction on slick surfaces

Material inspired by Japanese paper-cutting art could help to prevent falls in icy or slippery conditions.

June 1, 2020

Professor Ted Adelson's team created a soft robotic finger that uses embedded cameras and deep learning to enable high-resolution tactile sensing and “proprioception” (awareness of positions and movements of the body).

Giving soft robots feeling

In a pair of papers from MIT CSAIL, two teams enable better sense and perception for soft robotic grippers.

June 1, 2020

Students participating in MIT Quest for Intelligence-funded UROP projects include: (clockwise from top left) Alon Kosowsky-Sachs, Isaac Wolverton, Kuan Wei Huang, and Karen Gu.

Undergraduates develop next-generation intelligence tools

UROP students explore applications in robotics, health care, language understanding, and nuclear engineering.

May 26, 2020

2020 MIT Fulbright scholars include Sandra Walter, Srimayi Tenali, William Pinney, Talia Khan, Anshula Gandhi, Booker Schelhaas, Christien Williams, Ivy Li, Kedi Hu, and Max Kessler.

Eleven from MIT awarded 2020 Fulbright Fellowships

Graduating seniors and recent alumni will spend upcoming year abroad on Fulbright grants.

May 22, 2020

A new technology called ELAST transforms tissues, such as this slab of human brain, to make them reversibly stretchable or compressible, as well as much more durable. This allows them to be repeatedly stretched out or squished down thin for much faster infusion of labeling probes, which labs use to highlight cells or molecules under the microscope.

Making tissue stretchable, compressible, and nearly indestructible

Chemical process called ELAST allows labeling probes to infuse more quickly, and makes samples tough enough for repeated handling.

May 20, 2020

MIT News recently spoke with three leaders of MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future. Left to right: co-chair David A. Mindell, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing at MIT; executive director Elisabeth Beck Reynolds PhD ‘10, who is also executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center; and co-chair David ...

The changing world of work

MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future responds to rapid changes brought by the pandemic.

May 18, 2020

Francesca O’Hanlon of Blue Tap delivered a pitch at the Water Innovation Prize on April 22. Her team won first place with a novel water chlorinating system that makes clean water affordable and accessible for users without existing access to healthy water supplies.

MIT student leaders go virtual with global startup competitions

In the face of Covid-19, the MIT Water Club and the MIT Food and Agriculture Club take their signature innovation prizes online.

May 15, 2020

Left to right: MIT professors Lily Tsai, Paola Capellaro, and Warren Seering are “Committed to Caring."

Achieving advisory equilibrium

Professors Paola Cappellaro, Warren Seering, and Lily Tsai honored as “Committed to Caring.”

May 15, 2020

To ensure the best coverage of our solar system, MIT Assistant Professor Richard Linares envisions a constellation of "statites" that communicate and work together, only activating the statite in the optimum position to fly by or rendezvous with an interstellar object successfully. Other statites in the constellation can continue to wait for the next ISO to appear.

To catch an interstellar visitor, use a solar-powered space slingshot

MIT research proposal for rendezvous missions with interstellar objects selected for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program.

May 6, 2020

New research by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu shows that since 1987, automation has taken away jobs from lower-skill workers without being replaced by an equivalent number of labor-market opportunities.

Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality

Job-replacing tech has directly driven the income gap since the late 1980s, economists report.

May 5, 2020

A new study co-authored by an MIT professor shows firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly.

Robots help some firms, even while workers across industries struggle

Study finds manufacturing companies that are quick to automate can thrive, but overall employment drops.

May 5, 2020

MIT professor Daron Acemoglu is co-author of a new study showing that each robot added to the workforce has the effect of replacing 3.3 jobs across the U.S.

How many jobs do robots really replace?

MIT economist Daron Acemoglu’s new research puts a number on the job costs of automation.

May 4, 2020

Screenshot from MIT Sloan Executive Education's recent Platform Strategy live online program offering

MIT Sloan Executive Education pivots to live online courses

Jumping the digital learning curve is forging a whole new path for participant engagement and program delivery.

April 29, 2020

MIT researchers used machine learning to find entirely new algorithms for encoding exploration. Their machine-designed algorithms outperformed human-designed algorithms on the wide range of simulated tasks and environments shown here.

Automating the search for entirely new “curiosity” algorithms

Researchers show that computers can “write” algorithms that adapt to radically different environments better than algorithms designed by humans.

April 28, 2020

Lead author Joseph DelPreto controls a "Conduct-A-Bot" drone with his arm muscles.

Muscle signals can pilot a robot

CSAIL's Conduct-A-Bot system uses muscle signals to cue a drone’s movement, enabling more natural human-robot communication.

April 27, 2020

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