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MIT research scientist Stephanie Dutkiewicz in her office with a display of her phytoplankton model simulation

Computing the ocean’s true colors

Stephanie Dutkiewicz’ phytoplankton models project the future of the ocean as food source and carbon sink.

September 15, 2016

“Learning from this model, we can understand what’s really going on in these superconductors, and what one should do to make higher-temperature superconductors, approaching hopefully room temperature,” says Martin Zwierlein, professor of physics and principal investigator in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics.

For first time, researchers see individual atoms keep away from each other or bunch up as pairs

Observations of atomic interactions could help pave way to room-temperature superconductors.

September 15, 2016

$Polymers, or long chains of repeating molecules, are found in many objects that we encounter every day, including anything made of plastic or rubber. In many materials, however, a significant fraction of these chains bind to themselves, forming defects.$

New theory overcomes a longstanding polymer problem

Technique for calculating elasticity could aid design of new materials.

September 15, 2016

A new technique invented at MIT can precisely measure the growth of many individual cells simultaneously. “The device provides new insights into how cells grow and respond to drugs,” MIT professor Scott Manalis says.

Microchip enables fast, precise measurement of single-cell growth

Device that measures growth of many individual cells simultaneously could lead to rapid tests for antibiotics.

September 5, 2016

MPC-CMSE Summer Scholar Victoria Yao shows a mixture of sodium thiosulfate being stirred in a solution of copper hexacyanoferrate where its reacts to produce larger compounds that can be filtered out of the solution. These compounds are being developed for use in electrodes for a water-based flow-driven battery for grid level storage.

Designing safe, cheap batteries for grid level storage

Summer Scholar Victoria Yao experiments with water-based, flow-driven battery concept in Brushett Lab.

September 1, 2016

This summer, Jennifer Coulter worked on modeling the behavior of ferromagnetic particles with Alfredo Alexander-Katz, the Walter Henry Gale Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.

Modeling how colloidal particles spin through a fixed array

Summer Scholar Jennifer Coulter works on computer simulations with associate professor of materials science Alfredo Alexander-Katz.

August 29, 2016

PhD Ezzeldin Hamed, professor Dina Katabi, and visiting researcher Hariharan Rahul developed MegaMIMO to address spectrum crunch.

Solving network congestion

MegaMIMO system from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab speeds data transfer by coordinating multiple routers at the same time.

August 23, 2016

Michael Floyd, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, says that in developing seismic hazard assessments, it’s important to consider afterslip and slowly creeping faults, which occur often and over long periods of time following the more obvious earthquake.

2014 Napa earthquake continued to creep, weeks after main shock

Continuing seismic activity could pose additional hazards to infrastructure.

August 19, 2016

Clockwise from top left: Cathy Drennan, professor of chemistry and biology at MIT; Squire Booker, a professor of chemistry and of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State; Martin McLaughlin ’15; and an image of LipA.

Research by MIT undergrad helps crack chemical mystery

Study finds enzyme “cannibalizes” itself to perform an essential reaction.

August 8, 2016

MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering graduate student Peter Su shows Summer Scholar Ashley Del Valle Morales how to operate a laser and detector system she will use during her summer project under Senior Research Scientist Anuradha Agarwal.

Chemical sensing at telecom wavelengths

Summer Scholar Ashley Del Valle Morales probes new a silicon carbide system in the MIT Microphotonics Center.

August 8, 2016

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a huge, cubic-kilometer particle detector buried deep under the ice at the South Pole. After analyzing 20,000 neutrinos detected over the span of a year at the observatory, scientists were unable to observe any sign of sterile, or “hidden,” neutrinos.

Neutrino search finds no evidence of “hidden” particle

If discovered, sterile neutrinos may explain dark matter.

August 8, 2016

A new microfluidic device that replicates the neuromuscular junction — the vital connection where nerve meets muscle — contains a small cluster of neurons (green) and a single muscle fiber (red). A fluorescence image, bottom, shows the motor neurons sending out axons toward a muscle strip over a distance of about 1 millimeter.

Replicating the connection between muscles and nerves

New chip could help test drugs for ALS, other neuromuscular disorders.

August 3, 2016

Erica Eggleton is working this summer in the lab of MIT Professor Krystyn Van Vliet on lithium manganese oxide (LMO) electrodes for lithium ion batteries. Here, she measures out carbon powder, a binder, and LMO, the active powder used in the battery electrodes.

Analyzing lithium ion battery fatigue

Summer Scholar Erica Eggleton joins Van Vliet Lab to make and test lithium manganese oxide electrodes.

August 2, 2016

English is the most used language on the Internet, and globally most of the people who speak or write in English are non-native speakers. A new database of annotated English sentences written by non-native speakers could help improve how computers handle the spoken or written language of non-native English speakers.

First major database of non-native English

Resource could yield linguistic insights, practical applications for non-native English speakers.

July 29, 2016

A new system that can anticipate room assignments and suggest which nurses to assign to patients for C-sections and other procedures provided satisfactory recommendations to nurses 90 percent of the time.

Robot helps nurses schedule tasks on labor floor

System from Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab suggests where to move patients and who should do C-sections.

July 13, 2016