Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS)

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.

“Researchers at MIT and Harvard said that they achieved a landmark feat of engineering by creating a sophisticated machine—and doing so inexpensively and quickly—that has the ability to autonomously interact with its environment,” Kevin Conlon and Leigh Remizowski of CNN report.

Wired reporter Katie Collins writes about the new self-assembling, mobile robot developed by MIT and Harvard researchers. “It takes only four minutes for the robot to fold itself up, after which it can walk away with no human intervention,” writes Collins. 

Writing for BetaBoston, Nidhi Subbaraman reports on the self-assembling robot, made of inexpensive materials, developed by researchers from MIT and Harvard. This research demonstrates the potential to make robots easily accessible and affordable for the general population, Prof. Daniela Rus explains. 

Megan Turchi of Boston.com writes about the new autonomous, self-assembling robots designed by researchers from MIT and Harvard. The robots can fold themselves into mobile structures that are then able to move independently. 

Carolyn Johnson of The Boston Globe writes about the self-folding robots designed by a team from MIT and Harvard. “The question is, can we develop the tools that will allow us to automatically and rapidly generate one robot for any task?” says Professor Daniela Rus.

Robert Lee Hotz reports for The Wall Street Journal on the new self-assembling robot developed by researchers from MIT and Harvard. The robot can transform from a flat sheet of paper into a mobile robot in four minutes, and the technique has applications in everything from self-assembling satellites to shape-shifting robots for search-and-rescue operations, Hotz reports. 

Brooks Hays writes for United Press International about the self-folding robots created by researchers from MIT and Harvard. "The exciting thing here is that you create this device that has computation embedded in the flat, printed version," explains Prof. Daniela Rus.