Research Laboratory of Electronics

This image shows the basic setup that enables researchers to use lasers as optical “tweezers” to pick individual atoms out from a cloud and hold them in place. The atoms are imaged onto a camera, and the traps are generated by a laser that is split into many different focused laser beams. This allows a single atom to be trapped at each focus.

Scientists set traps for atoms with single-particle precision

Technique may enable large-scale atom arrays for quantum computing.

November 3, 2016

Electric motors find new roles in robots, ships, cars, and microgrids

James Kirtley discusses the transition from gas to electric motors and the impact these motors have had on modern technologies.

October 24, 2016

Monitoring Parkinson’s symptoms at home

Keyboard-monitoring technique can detect motor difficulties as patients type.

October 5, 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

MIT biological engineers have devised a memory storage system illustrated here as a DNA-embedded meter that is recording the activity of a signaling pathway in a human cell.

Recording analog memories in human cells

Engineers program human cells to store complex histories in their DNA.

August 18, 2016

Toward practical quantum computers

Built-in optics could enable chips that use trapped ions as quantum bits.

August 8, 2016

(From left) MIT Professor of Electrical Engineering Steven Leeb, graduate student John Donnal, and electrical engineer and consultant Jim Paris PhD ’13

What’s wasting power at home? Ask your app!

New system from MIT can identify how much power is being used by each device in a household.

August 1, 2016

A new, portable production system is designed to manufacture a range of biopharmaceuticals on demand. The principal component of the microbioreactor is a plastic chip with microfluidic circuits (green), optical sensors (red and blue circles) for monitoring oxygen and acidity, and a filter to retain the cells while the therapeutic protein is extracted (white circle).

Portable device produces biopharmaceuticals on demand

System would use microbes for manufacturing small amounts of vaccines and other therapies.

July 29, 2016

“You can build very complex computing systems if you integrate the element of memory together with computation,” says Timothy Lu, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering, and head of the Synthetic Biology Group at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics.

Scientists program cells to remember and respond to series of stimuli

New approach to biological circuit design enables scientists to track cell histories.

July 21, 2016

Robert Fano's work on information theory and time-sharing computers were vital precursors to today's computing technologies.

Robert Fano, computing pioneer and founder of CSAIL, dies at 98

Professor emeritus helped launch field of information theory and developed early time-sharing computers.

July 15, 2016

This diagram depicts the way a mid-infrared laser (red cylinder, left) can send a beam through the atmosphere that generates filaments of ionized air molecules (multicolored beam, center, shown with magnified view). These filaments, which can be kilometers long, help to keep the beam concentrated enough to generate mid-infrared light in air (blue cloud, right) that can reveal detailed chemical com...

New mid-infrared laser system could detect atmospheric chemicals

Laser pulses produce glowing plasma filaments in open air, could enable long-distance monitoring.

June 28, 2016

The researchers’ compiler takes as input differential equations and translates them into voltages and current flows across an analog chip.

Analog computing returns

New analog compiler could help enable simulation of whole organs and even organisms.

June 20, 2016

Researchers at MIT and Sandia National Laboratories have designed a device that is an array of 37 microfabricated lasers on a single chip. Its power requirements are relatively low because the radiation emitted by all of the lasers is “phase locked,” meaning that the troughs and crests of its waves are perfectly aligned.

New approach to microlasers

Technique for “phase locking” arrays of tiny lasers could lead to terahertz security scanners.

June 13, 2016

These micrographs show the fibers embedded in polymer and demonstrate how the fibers break apart into segments when they are stretched out in the cold-drawing process.

New method snips complex fibers into uniform particles

Stretching process can produce nanoscale rods or strips made of many material combinations.

June 6, 2016

Gene circuits in live cells can perform complex computations

Technique combines analogue and digital processes in engineered cells.

June 3, 2016

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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