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“The problem with planning contingencies is that there are so many things that can go wrong, if you generated plans for all possible contingencies, you’d go nuts,” Brian Williams says.

Automatic contingency planning

Algorithm lets planning systems generate backup plans efficiently.

February 15, 2016

Professor Jonathan How has been selected a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He’s pictured here with vehicles that the Aerospace Controls Laboratory is using to investigate algorithms for predicting pedestrian motion patterns — a critical function for future mobility on demand systems and self-driving cars.

Jonathan How named AIAA Fellow

MIT professor and engineer honored for significant contributions to the field of aeronautics.

February 11, 2016

Clockwise from top left: Tomás Palacios, Devavrat Shah, Dirk Englund, and Russ Tedrake

EECS announces four faculty promotions

Palacios, Shah, Tedrake promoted to full professor; Englund promoted to associate professor without tenure.

February 8, 2016

MIT researchers have designed a new chip to implement neural networks. It is 10 times as efficient as a mobile GPU, so it could enable mobile devices to run powerful artificial-intelligence algorithms locally, rather than uploading data to the Internet for processing.

Energy-friendly chip can perform powerful artificial-intelligence tasks

Advance could enable mobile devices to implement “neural networks” modeled on the human brain.

February 3, 2016

A panel of MIT alumni who shared their experiences with starting and working at young companies included Alice Brooks (speaking), co-founder of Roominate. Other speakers were (from left to right): moderator Arun Saigal, co-founder and CEO of Rappidly; Wei Li, a principal engineer at Eta Devices; Amrita Saigal, co-founder of Saathi; and Theodora Koullias, founder and CEO of Jon Lou.

A jumpstart for entrepreneurs

Intensive course helps students navigate early challenges in starting a company.

January 29, 2016

Marvin Minsky, “father of artificial intelligence,” dies at 88

Professor emeritus was a co-founder of CSAIL and a founding member of the Media Lab.

January 25, 2016

Left to right: Susan Hockfield, Payal Kadakia, Dina Katabi, Helen Greiner, Jesse Draper, Anantha Chandrakasan

Empowering innovation

Panel highlighting female innovators from a range of fields aims to encourage student entrepreneurs.

January 22, 2016

In a forest simulation, algorithms segment space into “obstacle-free regions” and then link them together to find a single collision-free route.

Drones dodge obstacles

Motion-planning algorithms allow drones to do donuts, figure-eights in object-filled environments.

January 19, 2016

“I think the flexibility of having the opportunity to discover what you're interested in, to pursue these things, and to create a space for yourself where you can feel comfortable was what drove me to MIT,” Larissa Senatus says.

Larissa Senatus learns about the world by doing

Mechanical engineering major hopes to bring hands-on learning opportunities home to Haiti.

January 13, 2016

This diagram illustrates the principle behind the proposed energy-harvesting system. Two metal electrodes made of lithium-alloyed silicon form a sandwich around a layer of electrolyte, a polymer that ions (charged atoms) can move across. When the sandwich is bent, unequal stresses cause lithium ions to migrate across the electrolyte, producing a compensating electron current that can be harnessed ...

Harnessing the energy of small bending motions

New device could provide electrical power source from walking and other ambient motions.

January 6, 2016

MIT researchers fed their physics prediction system videos of collisions, shown as screenshots in (a) and (b), which were then converted into simulations generated by the 3-D physics engine, shown in (c) and (d).

Computer model matches humans at predicting how objects move

“3-D physics engine” from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory simulates the human brain to infer physical properties.

January 4, 2016

A DeLorean time machine appeared on campus for Back to the Future Day, a popular event on Twitter in 2015.

Top tweets of 2015

Best posts of the year on @MIT highlight our new humanoid robot, MIT women in engineering, an optics lesson for #TheDress, and more.

December 28, 2015

3 Questions: Martin Culpepper on making the future makers

MIT students want to make things. Meet the “Maker Czar” who’s helping them.

December 22, 2015

MIT students displayed sustainable fashion designs at the fifth MIT Trashion Show.

MIT brings a touch of trash to fashion

Student-run Trashion Show, returning for its fifth year, aims to foster awareness of sustainable materials.

December 18, 2015

An excited crowd cheers for MIT students in 2.70 (the precursor of 2.007) as they compete in the final competition in 1979.

A mechanical engineering rite of passage at MIT

Since the 1970s, Department of Mechanical Engineering course 2.007 has introduced undergraduate students to hands-on designing and building.

December 15, 2015

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