Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS)

Researchers at MIT have developed a waterproof glue based on the proteins that allow shellfish to cling to rocks, reports Brooks Hays for UPI. "We're trying to figure out if by adding other mussel foot proteins, we can increase the adhesive strength even more and improve the material's robustness," said Professor Timothy Lu.

Francie Diep writes for Popular Science about a new waterproof adhesive developed by Professor Timothy Lu’s team. “The glue, which works underwater, incorporates proteins that mussels normally use to adhere to rocks, jetties, and larger sea critters,” writes Diep.

CBS News reports that MIT engineers have identified several combinations of genes that make bacteria more vulnerable to antibiotics. This research could help in the fight against “superbugs,” drug-resistant bacteria that kill at least 23,000 people per year in the U.S.

Jordon Golson of Wired reports on a new traffic control system created by MIT researchers: “The ‘RoadRunner’ system, developed for Singapore by graduate student Jason Gao and his advisor Li-Shiuan Peh, issues a digital ‘token’ to each car entering a congestion-prone area.”

“Inspired by octopus tentacles, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL)'s latest robot is as squishy as can be,” writes Rachel Feltman of The Washington Post. “Like other soft robots, this tentacle has potential in search and rescue missions.”

Thomas Tamblyn of The Huffington Post reports on a soft, tentacle-shaped robot developed by doctoral candidate Andrew Marchese and PhD student Robert Katzschmann: “The arm is made using purely silicone which is then inflated and deflated forcing the arm to move in the desired direction.”

Francie Diep writes for Popular Science about a soft robot designed by MIT’s Distributed Systems Lab, that is able to navigate a maze unaided: “Researchers that build soft robots like this one hope that in the future, soft machines will be safer for humans to work with than hard metal ones.”

Scientists at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have discovered a new way to test for malaria using magnets, reports Charlotte Seager of The Guardian. The new method will allow for individual diagnostic tests to be performed for less than 10 cents.

Boston Globe reporter Chris Reify writes that Professor Sangeeta Bhatia has been awarded the 2014 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. “Dr. Bhatia is a wonderful example of a woman who has used her brilliance, skill and creativity to radically improve the detection and treatment of serious global health issues,” says Dorothy Lemelson, Lemelson Foundation chair. 

NBC News reports that MIT Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT prize for her work designing miniaturized biomedical tools. "As innovations emerge, we're constantly asking whether they can be repurposed for one of the two diseases we concentrate on: liver disease and cancer,” says Bhatia. 

Writing for CNBC, Hazma Ali reports on new MIT research showing that humans prefer to receive orders from robots rather than humans. "Our findings showed that our subjects strongly preferred when the robot scheduled the work of the team,” explains graduate student Matthew Gombolay. 

Nicole Skinner writes for Nature about how MIT researchers have developed a new technique to test for malaria. The new method only requires a tiny droplet of blood to check for malaria and can provide a diagnosis within minutes. 

Drake Bennett of Bloomberg Businessweek reports on how a team of researchers from MIT and Harvard have created a robot that can self-assemble from a flat sheet of paper in four minutes. The robot is made of paper, and layered with a circuit board and prestretched polystyrene, the same material used to create Shrinky Dinks, Bennett explains. 

Bloomberg Businessweek spotlights the new self-folding, mobile robot developed by MIT and Harvard researchers. The design for the robot was inspired by origami and the team used inexpensive and easily accessible materials to build the robot, Bloomberg reports. 

Joseph Flaherty of Wired takes a close look at the design of MIT’s self-assembling robots. “[T]hese researchers are promoting a new kind of manufacturing where engineers can elegantly specify a design and watch it spring to life like a seed emerging from the ground,” writes Flaherty.