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    New MIT-LUMA Lab created to address climate challenges in the Mediterranean region

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    The MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and the LUMA Foundation announced today the establishment of the MIT-LUMA Lab to advance paradigm-shifting innovations at the nexus of art, science, technology, conservation, and design. The aim is to empower innovative thinkers to realize their ambitions, support local communities as they seek to address climate-related issues, and scale solutions to pressing challenges facing the Mediterranean region.  The main programmatic pillars of the lab will be collaborative scholarship and research around design, new materials, and sustainability; scholar exchange and education collaborations between the two organizations; innovation and entrepreneurship activities to transfer new ideas into practical applications; and co-production of exhibitions and events. The hope is that this engagement will create a novel model for other institutions to follow to craft innovative solutions to the leading challenge of our time.The MIT-LUMA Lab draws on an establishing gift from the LUMA Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Zurich formed by Maja Hoffmann in 2004 to support contemporary artistic production. The foundation supports a range of multidisciplinary projects that increase understanding of the environment, human rights, education, and culture.These themes are explored through programs organized by LUMA Arles, a project begun in 2013 and housed on a 27-acre interdisciplinary campus known as the Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France, an experimental site of exhibitions, artists’ residencies, research laboratories, and educational programs.“The Luma Foundation is committed to finding ways to address the current climate emergencies we are facing, focusing on exploring the potentials that can be found in diversity and engagement in every possible form,” says Maja Hoffmann, founder and president of the LUMA Foundation. “Cultural diversity, pluralism, and biodiversity feature at the top of our mission and our work is informed by these concepts.” A focus on the Mediterranean region“The culturally rich area of the Mediterranean, which has produced some of the most remarkable civilizational paradigms across geographies and historical periods, plays an important role in our thinking. Focusing the efforts of the MIT-LUMA Lab on the Mediterranean means extending the possibilities for positive change throughout other global ecosystems,” says Hoffmann. “Our projects of LUMA Arles and its research laboratory on materials and natural resources, the Atelier Luma, our position in one of Europe’s most important natural reserves, in conjunction with the expertise and forward-thinking approach of MIT, define the perfect framework that will allow us to explore new frontiers and devise novel ways to tackle our most significant civilizational risks,” she adds. “Supporting the production of new forms of knowledge and practices, and with locations in Cambridge and in Arles, our collaboration and partnership with MIT will generate solutions and models for the future, for the generations to come, in order to provide them the same and even better opportunities that what we have experienced.”“We know we do not have all the answers at MIT, but we do know how to ask the right questions, how to design effective experiments, and how to build meaningful collaborations,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of SA+P, which will host the lab. “I am grateful to the LUMA Foundation for offering support for faculty research deployment designed to engage local communities and create jobs, for course development to empower our faculty to teach classes centered on these issues, and for students who seek to dedicate their lives and careers to sustainability. We also look forward to hosting fellows and researchers from the foundation to strengthen our collaboration,” he adds.The Mediterranean region, the MIT-LUMA Lab’s focus, is one of the world’s most vital and fragile global commons. The future of climate relies on the sustainability of the region’s forests, oceans, and deserts that have for millennia created the environmental conditions and system-regulating functions necessary for life on Earth. Those who live in these areas are often the most severely affected by even relatively modest changes in the climate. Climate research and action: A priority at MITTo reverse negative trends and provide a new approach to addressing the climate crisis in these vast areas, SA+P is establishing international collaborations that bring know-how to the field, and in turn to learn from the communities and groups most challenged by climate impacts.The MIT-LUMA Lab is the first in what is envisioned as a series of regionally focused labs at SA+P under the conceptual aegis of a collaborative platform called Our Global Commons. This project will support progress on today’s climate challenges by focusing on community empowerment, long-term local collaborations around research and education, and job creation. Faculty-led fieldwork, engagements with local stakeholders, and student involvement will be the key elements.The creation of Our Global Commons comes as MIT works to dramatically expand its efforts to address climate change. In February 2024, President Sally Kornbluth announced the Climate Project at MIT, a major new initiative to mobilize the Institute’s resources and capabilities to research, develop, deploy, and scale-up new climate solutions. The Institute will hire its first-ever vice president for climate to oversee the new effort. “With the Climate Project at MIT, we aim to help make a decisive difference, at scale, on crucial global climate challenges — and we can only do that by engaging with outstanding colleagues around the globe,” says Kornbluth. “By connecting us to creative thinkers steeped in the cultural and environmental history and emerging challenges of the Mediterranean region, the MIT-LUMA Lab promises to spark important new ideas and collaborations.”“We are excited that the LUMA team will be joining in MIT’s engagement with climate issues, especially given their expertise in advancing vital work at the intersection of art and science, and their long-standing commitment to expanding the frontiers of sustainability and biodiversity,” says Sarkis. “With climate change upending many aspects of our society, the time is now for us to reaffirm and strengthen our SA+P tradition of on-the-ground work with and for communities around the world. Shared efforts among local communities, governments and corporations, and academia are necessary to bring about real change.” More

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      HPI-MIT design research collaboration creates powerful teams

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      The recent ransomware attack on ChangeHealthcare, which severed the network connecting health care providers, pharmacies, and hospitals with health insurance companies, demonstrates just how disruptive supply chain attacks can be. In this case, it hindered the ability of those providing medical services to submit insurance claims and receive payments.This sort of attack and other forms of data theft are becoming increasingly common and often target large, multinational corporations through the small and mid-sized vendors in their corporate supply chains, enabling breaks in these enormous systems of interwoven companies.Cybersecurity researchers at MIT and the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany, are focused on the different organizational security cultures that exist within large corporations and their vendors because it’s that difference that creates vulnerabilities, often due to the lack of emphasis on cybersecurity by the senior leadership in these small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).Keri Pearlson, executive director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS); Jillian Kwong, a research scientist at CAMS; and Christian Doerr, a professor of cybersecurity and enterprise security at HPI, are co-principal investigators (PIs) on the research project, “Culture and the Supply Chain: Transmitting Shared Values, Attitudes and Beliefs across Cybersecurity Supply Chains.”Their project was selected in the 2023 inaugural round of grants from the HPI-MIT Designing for Sustainability program, a multiyear partnership funded by HPI and administered by the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD). The program awards about 10 grants annually of up to $200,000 each to multidisciplinary teams with divergent backgrounds in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, engineering, design, architecture, the natural sciences, humanities, and business and management. The 2024 Call for Applications is open through June 3.Designing for Sustainability grants support scientific research that promotes the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on topics involving sustainable design, innovation, and digital technologies, with teams made up of PIs from both institutions. The PIs on these projects, who have common interests but different strengths, create more powerful teams by working together.Transmitting shared values, attitudes, and beliefs to improve cybersecurity across supply chainsThe MIT and HPI cybersecurity researchers say that most ransomware attacks aren’t reported. Smaller companies hit with ransomware attacks just shut down, because they can’t afford the payment to retrieve their data. This makes it difficult to know just how many attacks and data breaches occur. “As more data and processes move online and into the cloud, it becomes even more important to focus on securing supply chains,” Kwong says. “Investing in cybersecurity allows information to be exchanged freely while keeping data safe. Without it, any progress towards sustainability is stalled.”One of the first large data breaches in the United States to be widely publicized provides a clear example of how an SME cybersecurity can leave a multinational corporation vulnerable to attack. In 2013, hackers entered the Target Corporation’s own network by obtaining the credentials of a small vendor in its supply chain: a Pennsylvania HVAC company. Through that breach, thieves were able to install malware that stole the financial and personal information of 110 million Target customers, which they sold to card shops on the black market.To prevent such attacks, SME vendors in a large corporation’s supply chain are required to agree to follow certain security measures, but the SMEs usually don’t have the expertise or training to make good on these cybersecurity promises, leaving their own systems, and therefore any connected to them, vulnerable to attack.“Right now, organizations are connected economically, but not aligned in terms of organizational culture, values, beliefs, and practices around cybersecurity,” explains Kwong. “Basically, the big companies are realizing the smaller ones are not able to implement all the cybersecurity requirements. We have seen some larger companies address this by reducing requirements or making the process shorter. However, this doesn’t mean companies are more secure; it just lowers the bar for the smaller suppliers to clear it.”Pearlson emphasizes the importance of board members and senior management taking responsibility for cybersecurity in order to change the culture at SMEs, rather than pushing that down to a single department, IT office, or in some cases, one IT employee.The research team is using case studies based on interviews, field studies, focus groups, and direct observation of people in their natural work environments to learn how companies engage with vendors, and the specific ways cybersecurity is implemented, or not, in everyday operations. The goal is to create a shared culture around cybersecurity that can be adopted correctly by all vendors in a supply chain.This approach is in line with the goals of the Charter of Trust Initiative, a partnership of large, multinational corporations formed to establish a better means of implementing cybersecurity in the supply chain network. The HPI-MIT team worked with companies from the Charter of Trust and others last year to understand the impacts of cybersecurity regulation on SME participation in supply chains and develop a conceptual framework to implement changes for stabilizing supply chains.Cybersecurity is a prerequisite needed to achieve any of the United Nations’ SDGs, explains Kwong. Without secure supply chains, access to key resources and institutions can be abruptly cut off. This could include food, clean water and sanitation, renewable energy, financial systems, health care, education, and resilient infrastructure. Securing supply chains helps enable progress on all SDGs, and the HPI-MIT project specifically supports SMEs, which are a pillar of the U.S. and European economies.Personalizing product designs while minimizing material wasteIn a vastly different Designing for Sustainability joint research project that employs AI with engineering, “Personalizing Product Designs While Minimizing Material Waste” will use AI design software to lay out multiple parts of a pattern on a sheet of plywood, acrylic, or other material, so that they can be laser cut to create new products in real time without wasting material.Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Patrick Baudisch, a professor of computer science and chair of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at HPI, are co-PIs on the project. The two have worked together for years; Baudisch was Mueller’s PhD research advisor at HPI.Baudisch’s lab developed an online design teaching system called Kyub that lets students design 3D objects in pieces that are laser cut from sheets of wood and assembled to become chairs, speaker boxes, radio-controlled aircraft, or even functional musical instruments. For instance, each leg of a chair would consist of four identical vertical pieces attached at the edges to create a hollow-centered column, four of which will provide stability to the chair, even though the material is very lightweight.“By designing and constructing such furniture, students learn not only design, but also structural engineering,” Baudisch says. “Similarly, by designing and constructing musical instruments, they learn about structural engineering, as well as resonance, types of musical tuning, etc.”Mueller was at HPI when Baudisch developed the Kyub software, allowing her to observe “how they were developing and making all the design decisions,” she says. “They built a really neat piece for people to quickly design these types of 3D objects.” However, using Kyub for material-efficient design is not fast; in order to fabricate a model, the software has to break the 3D models down into 2D parts and lay these out on sheets of material. This takes time, and makes it difficult to see the impact of design decisions on material use in real-time.Mueller’s lab at MIT developed software based on a layout algorithm that uses AI to lay out pieces on sheets of material in real time. This allows AI to explore multiple potential layouts while the user is still editing, and thus provide ongoing feedback. “As the user develops their design, Fabricaide decides good placements of parts onto the user’s available materials, provides warnings if the user does not have enough material for a design, and makes suggestions for how the user can resolve insufficient material cases,” according to the project website.The joint MIT-HPI project integrates Mueller’s AI software with Baudisch’s Kyub software and adds machine learning to train the AI to offer better design suggestions that save material while adhering to the user’s design intent.“The project is all about minimizing the waste on these materials sheets,” Mueller says. She already envisions the next step in this AI design process: determining how to integrate the laws of physics into the AI’s knowledge base to ensure the structural integrity and stability of objects it designs.AI-powered startup design for the Anthropocene: Providing guidance for novel enterprisesThrough her work with the teams of MITdesignX and its international programs, Svafa Grönfeldt, faculty director of MITdesignX and professor of the practice in MIT MAD, has helped scores of people in startup companies use the tools and methods of design to ensure that the solution a startup proposes actually fits the problem it seeks to solve. This is often called the problem-solution fit.Grönfeldt and MIT postdoc Norhan Bayomi are now extending this work to incorporate AI into the process, in collaboration with MIT Professor John Fernández and graduate student Tyler Kim. The HPI team includes Professor Gerard de Melo; HPI School of Entrepreneurship Director Frank Pawlitschek; and doctoral student Michael Mansfeld.“The startup ecosystem is characterized by uncertainty and volatility compounded by growing uncertainties in climate and planetary systems,” Grönfeldt says. “Therefore, there is an urgent need for a robust model that can objectively predict startup success and guide design for the Anthropocene.”While startup-success forecasting is gaining popularity, it currently focuses on aiding venture capitalists in selecting companies to fund, rather than guiding the startups in the design of their products, services and business plans.“The coupling of climate and environmental priorities with startup agendas requires deeper analytics for effective enterprise design,” Grönfeldt says. The project aims to explore whether AI-augmented decision-support systems can enhance startup-success forecasting.“We’re trying to develop a machine learning approach that will give a forecasting of probability of success based on a number of parameters, including the type of business model proposed, how the team came together, the team members’ backgrounds and skill sets, the market and industry sector they’re working in and the problem-solution fit,” says Bayomi, who works with Fernández in the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. The two are co-founders of the startup Lamarr.AI, which employs robotics and AI to help reduce the carbon dioxide impact of the built environment.The team is studying “how company founders make decisions across four key areas, starting from the opportunity recognition, how they are selecting the team members, how they are selecting the business model, identifying the most automatic strategy, all the way through the product market fit to gain an understanding of the key governing parameters in each of these areas,” explains Bayomi.The team is “also developing a large language model that will guide the selection of the business model by using large datasets from different companies in Germany and the U.S. We train the model based on the specific industry sector, such as a technology solution or a data solution, to find what would be the most suitable business model that would increase the success probability of a company,” she says.The project falls under several of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including economic growth, innovation and infrastructure, sustainable cities and communities, and climate action.Furthering the goals of the HPI-MIT Joint Research ProgramThese three diverse projects all advance the mission of the HPI-MIT collaboration. MIT MAD aims to use design to transform learning, catalyze innovation, and empower society by inspiring people from all disciplines to interweave design into problem-solving. HPI uses digital engineering concentrated on the development and research of user-oriented innovations for all areas of life.Interdisciplinary teams with members from both institutions are encouraged to develop and submit proposals for ambitious, sustainable projects that use design strategically to generate measurable, impactful solutions to the world’s problems. More

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      in Security

      Exploring frontiers of mechanical engineering

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      From cutting-edge robotics, design, and bioengineering to sustainable energy solutions, ocean engineering, nanotechnology, and innovative materials science, MechE students and their advisors are doing incredibly innovative work. The graduate students highlighted here represent a snapshot of the great work in progress this spring across the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and demonstrate the ways the future of this field is as limitless as the imaginations of its practitioners.Democratizing design through AILyle RegenwetterHometown: Champaign, IllinoisAdvisor: Assistant Professor Faez AhmedInterests: Food, climbing, skiing, soccer, tennis, cookingLyle Regenwetter finds excitement in the prospect of generative AI to “democratize” design and enable inexperienced designers to tackle complex design problems. His research explores new training methods through which generative AI models can be taught to implicitly obey design constraints and synthesize higher-performing designs. Knowing that prospective designers often have an intimate knowledge of the needs of users, but may otherwise lack the technical training to create solutions, Regenwetter also develops human-AI collaborative tools that allow AI models to interact and support designers in popular CAD software and real design problems. Solving a whale of a problem Loïcka BailleHometown: L’Escale, FranceAdvisor: Daniel ZitterbartInterests: Being outdoors — scuba diving, spelunking, or climbing. Sailing on the Charles River, martial arts classes, and playing volleyballLoïcka Baille’s research focuses on developing remote sensing technologies to study and protect marine life. Her main project revolves around improving onboard whale detection technology to prevent vessel strikes, with a special focus on protecting North Atlantic right whales. Baille is also involved in an ongoing study of Emperor penguins. Her team visits Antarctica annually to tag penguins and gather data to enhance their understanding of penguin population dynamics and draw conclusions regarding the overall health of the ecosystem.Water, water anywhereCarlos Díaz-MarínHometown: San José, Costa RicaAdvisor: Professor Gang Chen | Former Advisor: Professor Evelyn WangInterests: New England hiking, biking, and dancingCarlos Díaz-Marín designs and synthesizes inexpensive salt-polymer materials that can capture large amounts of humidity from the air. He aims to change the way we generate potable water from the air, even in arid conditions. In addition to water generation, these salt-polymer materials can also be used as thermal batteries, capable of storing and reusing heat. Beyond the scientific applications, Díaz-Marín is excited to continue doing research that can have big social impacts, and that finds and explains new physical phenomena. As a LatinX person, Díaz-Marín is also driven to help increase diversity in STEM.Scalable fabrication of nano-architected materialsSomayajulu DhulipalaHometown: Hyderabad, IndiaAdvisor: Assistant Professor Carlos PortelaInterests: Space exploration, taekwondo, meditation.Somayajulu Dhulipala works on developing lightweight materials with tunable mechanical properties. He is currently working on methods for the scalable fabrication of nano-architected materials and predicting their mechanical properties. The ability to fine-tune the mechanical properties of specific materials brings versatility and adaptability, making these materials suitable for a wide range of applications across multiple industries. While the research applications are quite diverse, Dhulipala is passionate about making space habitable for humanity, a crucial step toward becoming a spacefaring civilization.Ingestible health-care devicesJimmy McRaeHometown: Woburn, MassachusettsAdvisor: Associate Professor Giovani TraversoInterests: Anything basketball-related: playing, watching, going to games, organizing hometown tournaments Jimmy McRae aims to drastically improve diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities through noninvasive health-care technologies. His research focuses on leveraging materials, mechanics, embedded systems, and microfabrication to develop novel ingestible electronic and mechatronic devices. This ranges from ingestible electroceutical capsules that modulate hunger-regulating hormones to devices capable of continuous ultralong monitoring and remotely triggerable actuations from within the stomach. The principles that guide McRae’s work to develop devices that function in extreme environments can be applied far beyond the gastrointestinal tract, with applications for outer space, the ocean, and more.Freestyle BMX meets machine learningEva NatesHometown: Narberth, Pennsylvania Advisor: Professor Peko HosoiInterests: Rowing, running, biking, hiking, bakingEva Nates is working with the Australian Cycling Team to create a tool to classify Bicycle Motocross Freestyle (BMX FS) tricks. She uses a singular value decomposition method to conduct a principal component analysis of the time-dependent point-tracking data of an athlete and their bike during a run to classify each trick. The 2024 Olympic team hopes to incorporate this tool in their training workflow, and Nates worked alongside the team at their facilities on the Gold Coast of Australia during MIT’s Independent Activities Period in January.Augmenting Astronauts with Wearable Limbs Erik BallesterosHometown: Spring, TexasAdvisor: Professor Harry AsadaInterests: Cosplay, Star Wars, Lego bricksErik Ballesteros’s research seeks to support astronauts who are conducting planetary extravehicular activities through the use of supernumerary robotic limbs (SuperLimbs). His work is tailored toward design and control manifestation to assist astronauts with post-fall recovery, human-leader/robot-follower quadruped locomotion, and coordinated manipulation between the SuperLimbs and the astronaut to perform tasks like excavation and sample handling.This article appeared in the Spring 2024 edition of the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s magazine, MechE Connects.  More

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      in Energy

      Optimizing nuclear fuels for next-generation reactors

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      In 2010, when Ericmoore Jossou was attending college in northern Nigeria, the lights would flicker in and out all day, sometimes lasting only for a couple of hours at a time. The frustrating experience reaffirmed Jossou’s realization that the country’s sporadic energy supply was a problem. It was the beginning of his path toward nuclear engineering.

      Because of the energy crisis, “I told myself I was going to find myself in a career that allows me to develop energy technologies that can easily be scaled to meet the energy needs of the world, including my own country,” says Jossou, an assistant professor in a shared position between the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), where is the John Clark Hardwick (1986) Professor, and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

      Today, Jossou uses computer simulations for rational materials design, AI-aided purposeful development of cladding materials and fuels for next-generation nuclear reactors. As one of the shared faculty hires between the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and departments across MIT, his appointment recognizes his commitment to computing for climate and the environment.

      A well-rounded education in Nigeria

      Growing up in Lagos, Jossou knew education was about more than just bookish knowledge, so he was eager to travel and experience other cultures. He would start in his own backyard by traveling across the Niger river and enrolling in Ahmadu Bello University in northern Nigeria. Moving from the south was a cultural education with a different language and different foods. It was here that Jossou got to try and love tuwo shinkafa, a northern Nigerian rice-based specialty, for the first time.

      After his undergraduate studies, armed with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, Jossou was among a small cohort selected for a specialty master’s training program funded by the World Bank Institute and African Development Bank. The program at the African University of Science and Technology in Abuja, Nigeria, is a pan-African venture dedicated to nurturing homegrown science talent on the continent. Visiting professors from around the world taught intensive three-week courses, an experience which felt like drinking from a fire hose. The program widened Jossou’s views and he set his sights on a doctoral program with an emphasis on clean energy systems.

      A pivot to nuclear science

      While in Nigeria, Jossou learned of Professor Jerzy Szpunar at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who was looking for a student researcher to explore fuels and alloys for nuclear reactors. Before then, Jossou was lukewarm on nuclear energy, but the research sounded fascinating. The Fukushima, Japan, incident was recently in the rearview mirror and Jossou remembered his early determination to address his own country’s energy crisis. He was sold on the idea and graduated with a doctoral degree from the University of Saskatchewan on an international dean’s scholarship.

      Jossou’s postdoctoral work registered a brief stint at Brookhaven National Laboratory as staff scientist. He leaped at the opportunity to join MIT NSE as a way of realizing his research interest and teaching future engineers. “I would really like to conduct cutting-edge research in nuclear materials design and to pass on my knowledge to the next generation of scientists and engineers and there’s no better place to do that than at MIT,” Jossou says.

      Merging material science and computational modeling

      Jossou’s doctoral work on designing nuclear fuels for next-generation reactors forms the basis of research his lab is pursuing at MIT NSE. Nuclear reactors that were built in the 1950s and ’60s are getting a makeover in terms of improved accident tolerance. Reactors are not confined to one kind, either: We have micro reactors and are now considering ones using metallic nuclear fuels, Jossou points out. The diversity of options is enough to keep researchers busy testing materials fit for cladding, the lining that prevents corrosion of the fuel and release of radioactive fission products into the surrounding reactor coolant.

      The team is also investigating fuels that improve burn-up efficiencies, so they can last longer in the reactor. An intriguing approach has been to immobilize the gas bubbles that arise from the fission process, so they don’t grow and degrade the fuel.

      Since joining MIT in July 2023, Jossou is setting up a lab that optimizes the composition of accident-tolerant nuclear fuels. He is leaning on his materials science background and looping computer simulations and artificial intelligence in the mix.

      Computer simulations allow the researchers to narrow down the potential field of candidates, optimized for specific parameters, so they can synthesize only the most promising candidates in the lab. And AI’s predictive capabilities guide researchers on which materials composition to consider next. “We no longer depend on serendipity to choose our materials, our lab is based on rational materials design,” Jossou says, “we can rapidly design advanced nuclear fuels.”

      Advancing energy causes in Africa

      Now that he is at MIT, Jossou admits the view from the outside is different. He now harbors a different perspective on what Africa needs to address some of its challenges. “The starting point to solve our problems is not money; it needs to start with ideas,” he says, “we need to find highly skilled people who can actually solve problems.” That job involves adding economic value to the rich arrays of raw materials that the continent is blessed with. It frustrates Jossou that Niger, a country rich in raw material for uranium, has no nuclear reactors of its own. It ships most of its ore to France. “The path forward is to find a way to refine these materials in Africa and to be able to power the industries on that continent as well,” Jossou says.

      Jossou is determined to do his part to eliminate these roadblocks.

      Anchored in mentorship, Jossou’s solution aims to train talent from Africa in his own lab. He has applied for a MIT Global Experiences MISTI grant to facilitate travel and research studies for Ghanaian scientists. “The goal is to conduct research in our facility and perhaps add value to indigenous materials,” Jossou says.

      Adding value has been a consistent theme of Jossou’s career. He remembers wanting to become a neurosurgeon after reading “Gifted Hands,” moved by the personal story of the author, Ben Carson. As Jossou grew older, however, he realized that becoming a doctor wasn’t necessarily what he wanted. Instead, he was looking to add value. “What I wanted was really to take on a career that allows me to solve a societal problem.” The societal problem of clean and safe energy for all is precisely what Jossou is working on today. More

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      in Environment

      Letting the Earth answer back: Designing better planetary conversations

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      For Chen Chu MArch ’21, the invitation to join the 2023-24 cohort of Morningside Academy for Design Design Fellows has been an unparalleled opportunity to investigate the potential of design as an alternative method of problem-solving.

      After earning a master’s degree in architecture at MIT and gaining professional experience as a researcher at an environmental nongovernmental organization, Chu decided to pursue a PhD in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. “I discovered that I needed to engage in a deeper way with the most difficult ethical challenges of our time, especially those arising from the fact of climate change,” he explains. “For me, MIT has always represented this wonderful place where people are inherently intellectually curious — it’s a very rewarding community to be part of.”

      Chu’s PhD research, guided by his doctoral advisor Delia Wendel, assistant professor of urban studies and international development, focuses on how traditional practices of floodplain agriculture can inform local and global strategies for sustainable food production and distribution in response to climate change. 

      Typically located alongside a river or stream, floodplains arise from seasonal flooding patterns that distribute nutrient-rich silt and create connectivity between species. This results in exceptionally high levels of biodiversity and microbial richness, generating the ideal conditions for agriculture. It’s no accident that the first human civilizations were founded on floodplains, including Mesopotamia (named for its location poised between two rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris), the Indus River Civilization, and the cultures of Ancient Egypt based around the Nile. Riverine transportation networks and predictable flooding rhythms provide a framework for trade and cultivation; nonetheless, floodplain communities must learn to live with risk, subject to the sudden disruptions of high waters, drought, and ecological disequilibrium. 

      For Chu, the “unstable and ungovernable” status of floodplains makes them fertile ground for thinking about. “I’m drawn to these so-called ‘wet landscapes’ — edge conditions that act as transitional spaces between land and water, between humans and nature, between city and river,” he reflects. “The development of extensively irrigated agricultural sites is typically a collective effort, which raises intriguing questions about how communities establish social organizations that simultaneously negotiate top-down state control and adapt to the uncertainty of nature.”

      Chu is in the process of honing the focus of his dissertation and refining his data collection methods, which will include archival research and fieldwork, as well as interviews with floodplain inhabitants to gain an understanding of sociopolitical nuances. Meanwhile, his role as a design fellow gives him the space to address the big questions that fire his imagination. How can we live well on shared land? How can we take responsibility for the lives of future generations? What types of political structures are required to get everyone on board? 

      These are just a few of the questions that Chu recently put to his cohort in a presentation. During the weekly seminars for the fellowship, he has the chance to converse with peers and mentors of multiple disciplines — from researchers rethinking the pedagogy of design to entrepreneurs applying design thinking to new business models to architects and engineers developing new habitats to heal our relationship with the natural world. 

      “I’ll admit — I’m wary of the human instinct to problem-solve,” says Chu. “When it comes to the material conditions and lived experience of people and planet, there’s a limit to our economic and political reasoning, and to conventional architectural practice. That said, I do believe that the mindset of a designer can open up new ways of thinking. At its core, design is an interdisciplinary practice based on the understanding that a problem can’t be solved from a narrow, singular perspective.” 

      The stimulating structure of a MAD Fellowship — free from immediate obligations to publish or produce, fellows learn from one another and engage with visiting speakers via regular seminars and events — has prompted Chu to consider what truly makes for generative conversation in the contexts of academia and the private and public sectors. In his opinion, discussions around climate change often fail to take account of one important voice; an absence he describes as “that silent being, the Earth.”

      “You can’t ask the Earth, ‘What does justice mean to you?’ Nature will not respond,” he reflects. To bridge the gap, Chu believes it’s important to combine the study of specific political and social conditions with broader existential questions raised by the environmental humanities. His own research draws upon the perspectives of thinkers including Dipesh Chakrabarty, Donna Haraway, Peter Singer,  Anna Tsing, and Michael Watts, among others. He cites James C. Scott’s lecture “In Praise of Floods” as one of his most important influences.

      In addition to his instinctive appreciation for theory, Chu’s outlook is grounded by an attention to innovation at the local level. He is currently establishing the parameters of his research, examining case studies of agricultural systems and flood mitigation strategies that have been sustained for centuries. 

      “One example is the polder system that is practiced in the Netherlands, China, Bangladesh, and many parts of the world: small, low-lying tracts of land submerged in water and surrounded by dykes and canals,” he explains. “You’ll find a different but comparable strategy in the colder regions of Japan. Crops are protected from the winter winds by constructing a spatial unit with the house at the center; trees behind the house serve as windbreakers and paddy fields for rice are located in front of the house, providing an integrated system of food and livelihood security.”

      Chu observes that there is a tendency for international policymakers to overlook local solutions in favor of grander visions and ambitious climate pledges — but he is equally keen not to romanticize vernacular practices. “Realistically, it’s always a two-way interaction. Unless you already have a workable local system in place, it’s difficult to implement a solution without top-down support. On the other hand, the large-scale technocratic dreams are empty if ignorant of local traditions and histories.” 

      By navigating between the global and the local, the theoretical and the practical, the visionary and the cautionary, Chu has hope in the possibility of gradually finding a way toward long-term solutions that adapt to specific conditions over time. It’s a model of ambition and criticality that Chu sees played out during dialogue at MAD and within his department; at root, he’s aware that the outcome of these conversations depends on the ethical context that shapes them.

      “I’ve been fortunate to have many mentors who have taught me the power of humility; a respect for the finitude, fragility,  and uncertainty of life,” he recalls. “It’s a mindset that’s barely apparent in today’s push for economic growth.” The flip-side of hubristic growth is an assumption that technological ingenuity will be enough to solve the climate crisis, but Chu’s optimism arises from a different source: “When I feel overwhelmed by the weight of the problems we’re facing, I just need to look around me,” he says. “Here on campus — at MAD, in my home department, and increasingly among the new generations of students — there’s a powerful ethos of political sensitivity, ethical compassion, and an attention to clear and critical judgment. That always gives me hope for the planet.” More

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      in Environment

      Q&A: A blueprint for sustainable innovation

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      Atacama Biomaterials is a startup combining architecture, machine learning, and chemical engineering to create eco-friendly materials with multiple applications. Passionate about sustainable innovation, its co-founder Paloma Gonzalez-Rojas SM ’15, PhD ’21 highlights here how MIT has supported the project through several of its entrepreneurship initiatives, and reflects on the role of design in building a holistic vision for an expanding business.

      Q: What role do you see your startup playing in the sustainable materials space?

      A: Atacama Biomaterials is a venture dedicated to advancing sustainable materials through state-of-the-art technology. With my co-founder Jose Tomas Dominguez, we have been working on developing our technology since 2019. We initially started the company in 2020 under another name and received Sandbox funds the next year. In 2021, we went through The Engine’s accelerator, Blueprint, and changed our name to Atacama Biomaterials in 2022 during the MITdesignX program. 

      This technology we have developed allows us to create our own data and material library using artificial intelligence and machine learning, and serves as a platform applicable to various industries horizontally — biofuels, biological drugs, and even mining. Vertically, we produce inexpensive, regionally sourced, and environmentally friendly bio-based polymers and packaging — that is, naturally compostable plastics as a flagship product, along with AI products.

      Q: What motivated you to venture into biomaterials and found Atacama?

      A: I’m from Chile, a country with a beautiful, rich geography and nature where we can see all the problems stemming from industry, waste management, and pollution. We named our company Atacama Biomaterials because the Atacama Desert in Chile — one of the places where you can best see the stars in the world — is becoming a plastic dump, as many other places on Earth. I care deeply about sustainability, and I have an emotional attachment to stop these problems. Considering that manufacturing accounts for 29 percent of global carbon emissions, it is clear that sustainability has a role in how we define technology and entrepreneurship, as well as a socio-economic dimension.

      When I first came to MIT, it was to develop software in the Department of Architecture’s Design and Computation Group, with MIT professors Svafa Gronfeldt as co-advisor and Regina Barzilay as committee member. During my PhD, I studied machine-learning methods simulating pedestrian motion to understand how people move in space. In my work, I would use lots of plastics for 3D printing and I couldn’t stop thinking about sustainability and climate change, so I reached out to material science and mechanical engineering professors to look into biopolymers and degradable bio-based materials. This is how I met my co-founder, as we were both working with MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld. Together, we were part of one of the first teams in the world to 3D print wood fibers, which is difficult — it’s slow and expensive — and quickly pivoted to sustainable packaging. 

      I then won a fellowship from MCSC [the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium], which gave me freedom to explore further, and I eventually got a postdoc in MIT chemical engineering, guided by MIT Professor Gregory Rutledge, a polymer physicist. This was unexpected in my career path. Winning Nucleate Eco Track 2022 and the MITdesignX Innovation Award in 2022 profiled Atacama Biomaterials as one of the rising startups in Boston’s biotechnology and climate-tech scene.

      Q: What is your process to develop new biomaterials?

      A: My PhD research, coupled with my background in material development and molecular dynamics, sparked the realization that principles I studied simulating pedestrian motion could also apply to molecular engineering. This connection may seem unconventional, but for me, it was a natural progression. Early in my career, I developed an intuition for materials, understanding their mechanics and physics.

      Using my experience and skills, and leveraging machine learning as a technology jump, I applied a similar conceptual framework to simulate the trajectories of molecules and find potential applications in biomaterials. Making that parallel and shift was amazing. It allowed me to optimize a state-of-the-art molecular dynamic software to run twice as fast as more traditional technologies through my algorithm presented at the International Conference of Machine Learning this year. This is very important, because this kind of simulation usually takes a week, so narrowing it down to two days has major implications for scientists and industry, in material science, chemical engineering, computer science and related fields. Such work greatly influenced the foundation of Atacama Biomaterials, where we developed our own AI to deploy our materials. In an effort to mitigate the environmental impact of manufacturing, Atacama is targeting a 16.7 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions associated with the manufacturing process of its polymers, through the use of renewable energy. 

      Another thing is that I was trained as an architect in Chile, and my degree had a design component. I think design allows me to understand problems at a very high level, and how things interconnect. It contributed to developing a holistic vision for Atacama, because it allowed me to jump from one technology or discipline to another and understand broader applications on a conceptual level. Our design approach also meant that sustainability came to the center of our work from the very beginning, not just a plus or an added cost.

      Q: What was the role of MITdesignX in Atacama’s development?

      A: I have known Svafa Grönfeldt, MITdesignX’s faculty director, for almost six years. She was the co-advisor of my PhD, and we had a mentor-mentee relationship. I admire the fact that she created a space for people interested in business and entrepreneurship to grow within the Department of Architecture. She and Executive Director Gilad Rosenzweig gave us fantastic advice, and we received significant support from mentors. For example, Daniel Tsai helped us with intellectual property, including a crucial patent for Atacama. And we’re still in touch with the rest of the cohort. I really like this “design your company” approach, which I find quite unique, because it gives us the opportunity to reflect on who we want to be as designers, technologists, and entrepreneurs. Studying user insights also allowed us to understand the broad applicability of our research, and align our vision with market demands, ultimately shaping Atacama into a company with a holistic perspective on sustainable material development.

      Q: How does Atacama approach scaling, and what are the immediate next steps for the company?

      A: When I think about accomplishing our vision, I feel really inspired by my 3-year-old daughter. I want her to experience a world with trees and wildlife when she’s 100 years old, and I hope Atacama will contribute to such a future.

      Going back to the designer’s perspective, we designed the whole process holistically, from feedstock to material development, incorporating AI and advanced manufacturing. Having proved that there is a demand for the materials we are developing, and having tested our products, manufacturing process, and technology in critical environments, we are now ready to scale. Our level of technology-readiness is comparable to the one used by NASA (level 4).

      We have proof of concept: a biodegradable and recyclable packaging material which is cost- and energy-efficient as a clean energy enabler in large-scale manufacturing. We have received pre-seed funding, and are sustainably scaling by taking advantage of available resources around the world, like repurposing machinery from the paper industry. As presented in the MIT Industrial Liaison and STEX Program’s recent Sustainability Conference, unlike our competitors, we have cost-parity with current packaging materials, as well as low-energy processes. And we also proved the demand for our products, which was an important milestone. Our next steps involve strategically expanding our manufacturing capabilities and research facilities and we are currently evaluating building a factory in Chile and establishing an R&D lab plus a manufacturing plant in the U.S. More

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      in Security

      Building a better indoor herb garden

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      Randall Briggs ’09, SM ’18 didn’t set out to build indoor gardens when he arrived at MIT. The winner of the 2010 2.007 robot competition class, he was excited to work on designing fighter planes one day.

      But in 2016, halfway through his studies for his master’s degree in mechanical engineering, Briggs’s father passed away unexpectedly. “It was a big blow to me. My motivation took a big hit, so it was hard for me to keep working on my research,” Briggs shares.

      Briggs ordered a home hydroponic garden in the hopes that growing herbs inside his apartment could bring him some positivity. “There is something healing about seeing something organic and beautiful grow and develop,” Briggs says.

      When the garden arrived, Briggs found that many aspects of the design fell short. The plants weren’t getting enough light because the LEDs were dispersing light throughout the room and not focusing it on the plants. “It’s just not very pleasing aesthetically when it’s, like, a fluorescent color of light, and it just fills your room,” Briggs says.

      He set forth to create a better indoor garden. Briggs turned his spare bedroom into a hydroponics lab, testing herbs growing under various lighting conditions and with different nutrient solutions. He read every book and article he could find on the subject. “The same seed pods that I had used in that cheap garden, when I moved them over to my garden, they grew way faster and way healthier and more fragrant and full of flavor,” he says.

      Working on this project became a daily source of joy for Briggs. “Every day when you come home, you want to see if it’s growing a little bit more or to see how they’re doing. I think that made me happy, too.”

      Briggs saw the potential for his garden to improve the well-being of others. “I thought if people had fresh herbs at home, they might be more inspired to cook for themselves instead of always just eating out, as it’s normally a lot healthier to cook your own food at home.”

      After much research and experimentation, GardenByte was born in 2017: a tabletop indoor herb garden that is nearly 3 feet wide with almost 2 feet of height for the plants to grow, which is quite a bit larger than most models on the market. With Briggs’s hydroponics technology, the plants grow three times faster than they would grow outdoors. His garden allows anyone to grow fresh herbs in a wide range of settings. And since plants have a longer shelf life than cut herbs, they also cut down on food waste.

      Briggs was determined to make something that grows plants well and is attractive in a variety of settings. The outer case is handcrafted from solid hardwood from a local Massachusetts lumber yard, ensuring both durability and a visually pleasing aesthetic that seamlessly integrates into any kitchen or restaurant setting. The light bar, crafted from a single piece of crystal-clear acrylic, maintains an unobtrusive and ethereal appearance. This choice complements the overall design while allowing the LED lights to emit a powerful simulation of full sunshine. To ensure a smooth transition from daytime growth to evening, four different types of LEDs were incorporated. Polymer lenses focus the light directly onto the plants, preventing any wastage or unnecessary light spillage in the room. A light and color sensor on top detect the lighting conditions in the room and automatically adjust the lighting in the garden to match, enhancing plant growth. The grid tray is designed to accommodate up to 39 plants at once, offering ample space for an array of herbs. To simplify plant care, the garden is connected to a mobile app that will allow you to care for your plants while you’re away.

      The herb garden contains computer numerical control (CNC) machined-aluminum parts, in contrast with the flimsier plastic most products use. The heat flow capacity of aluminum disperses the heat from all the LEDs and the aluminum grid tray helps keep it compact and thin but rigid, so users can lift the plants up without it bending.

      Briggs received his foundation in machining as an undergrad at the MIT Edgerton Center, where he was on the MIT Motorsports team and MIT Electric Vehicle Team. He learned how to use the CNC machines in the student machine shop at the Area 51 garage under the tutelage of Instructor Pat McAtamney and Briggs’s teammates.

      Building an electric motorcycle on the Electric Vehicle Team for the Isle of Man TT Race in 2011 helped prepare Briggs for creating a robust product for production. The race took place on city streets, raising the potential for deadly crashes. “When we were building that motorcycle, the head of our team, Lennon Rodgers, kept reiterating to us, ‘you got to think aircraft quality, like aircraft quality. This is actually a life-or-death project.’ Seeing the way that he led, and the way that he really set the bar for quality and for execution and kind of kept things moving, was really helpful for me.”

      “My hope in the future is to make a more mass-market version that’s a little bit cheaper and more available to everybody,” Briggs shares.

      The feedback from his first customers has all been positive. After delivering the product to a chef in Boston, Briggs says, “He told me that the whole first evening he was sitting at home with his boyfriend and he just kept staring at it, and he’s like, ‘it is so beautiful. It is so beautiful.’”

      “I feel like something that my dad taught me was that sometimes to do hard things, it does take hard work, and that it’s not always going to be exciting, necessarily,” Briggs shares. “It’s good to be inspired, it’s good to be passionate, but it’s not always going to get you through. And sometimes it’s just hard work that you got to press through the tough parts.” More

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      in Energy

      Jackson Jewett wants to design buildings that use less concrete

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      After three years leading biking tours through U.S. National Parks, Jackson Jewett decided it was time for a change.

      “It was a lot of fun, but I realized I missed buildings,” says Jewett. “I really wanted to be a part of that industry, learn more about it, and reconnect with my roots in the built environment.”

      Jewett grew up in California in what he describes as a “very creative household.”

      “I remember making very elaborate Halloween costumes with my parents, making fun dioramas for school projects, and building forts in the backyard, that kind of thing,” Jewett explains.

      Both of his parents have backgrounds in design; his mother studied art in college and his father is a practicing architect. From a young age, Jewett was interested in following in his father’s footsteps. But when he arrived at the University of California at Berkeley in the midst of the 2009 housing crash, it didn’t seem like the right time. Jewett graduated with a degree in cognitive science and a minor in history of architecture. And even as he led tours through Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and other parks, buildings were in the back of his mind.

      It wasn’t just the built environment that Jewett was missing. He also longed for the rigor and structure of an academic environment.

      Jewett arrived at MIT in 2017, initially only planning on completing the master’s program in civil and environmental engineering. It was then that he first met Josephine Carstensen, a newly hired lecturer in the department. Jewett was interested in Carstensen’s work on “topology optimization,” which uses algorithms to design structures that can achieve their performance requirements while using only a limited amount of material. He was particularly interested in applying this approach to concrete design, and he collaborated with Carstensen to help demonstrate its viability.

      After earning his master’s, Jewett spent a year and a half as a structural engineer in New York City. But when Carstensen was hired as a professor, she reached out to Jewett about joining her lab as a PhD student. He was ready for another change.

      Now in the third year of his PhD program, Jewett’s dissertation work builds upon his master’s thesis to further refine algorithms that can design building-scale concrete structures that use less material, which would help lower carbon emissions from the construction industry. It is estimated that the concrete industry alone is responsible for 8 percent of global carbon emissions, so any efforts to reduce that number could help in the fight against climate change.

      Implementing new ideas

      Topology optimization is a small field, with the bulk of the prior work being computational without any experimental verification. The work Jewett completed for his master’s thesis was just the start of a long learning process.

      “I do feel like I’m just getting to the part where I can start implementing my own ideas without as much support as I’ve needed in the past,” says Jewett. “In the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a reinforced concrete optimization algorithm that I hope will be the cornerstone of my thesis.”

      The process of fine-tuning a generative algorithm is slow going, particularly when tackling a multifaceted problem.

      “It can take days or usually weeks to take a step toward making it work as an entire integrated system,” says Jewett. “The days when that breakthrough happens and I can see the algorithm converging on a solution that makes sense — those are really exciting moments.”

      By harnessing computational power, Jewett is searching for materially efficient components that can be used to make up structures such as bridges or buildings. These are other constraints to consider as well, particularly ensuring that the cost of manufacturing isn’t too high. Having worked in the industry before starting the PhD program, Jewett has an eye toward doing work that can be feasibly implemented.

      Inspiring others

      When Jewett first visited MIT campus, he was drawn in by the collaborative environment of the institute and the students’ drive to learn. Now, he’s a part of that process as a teaching assistant and a supervisor in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.  

      Working as a teaching assistant isn’t a requirement for Jewett’s program, but it’s been one of his favorite parts of his time at MIT.

      “The MIT undergrads are so gifted and just constantly impress me,” says Jewett. “Being able to teach, especially in the context of what MIT values is a lot of fun. And I learn, too. My coding practices have gotten so much better since working with undergrads here.”

      Jewett’s experiences have inspired him to pursue a career in academia after the completion of his program, which he expects to complete in the spring of 2025. But he’s making sure to take care of himself along the way. He still finds time to plan cycling trips with his friends and has gotten into running ever since moving to Boston. So far, he’s completed two marathons.

      “It’s so inspiring to be in a place where so many good ideas are just bouncing back and forth all over campus,” says Jewett. “And on most days, I remember that and it inspires me. But it’s also the case that academics is hard, PhD programs are hard, and MIT — there’s pressure being here, and sometimes that pressure can feel like it’s working against you.”

      Jewett is grateful for the mental health resources that MIT provides students. While he says it can be imperfect, it’s been a crucial part of his journey.

      “My PhD thesis will be done in 2025, but the work won’t be done. The time horizon of when these things need to be implemented is relatively short if we want to make an impact before global temperatures have already risen too high. My PhD research will be developing a framework for how that could be done with concrete construction, but I’d like to keep thinking about other materials and construction methods even after this project is finished.” More

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      in Environment

      MIT engineering students take on the heat of Miami

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      Think back to the last time you had to wait for a bus. How miserable were you? If you were in Boston, your experience might have included punishing wind and icy sleet — or, more recently, a punch of pollen straight to the sinuses. But in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, where the effects of climate change are both drastic and intensifying, commuters have to contend with an entirely different set of challenges: blistering temperatures and scorching humidity, making long stints waiting in the sun nearly unbearable.

      One of Miami’s most urgent transportation needs is shared by car-clogged Boston: coaxing citizens to use the municipal bus network, rather than the emissions-heavy individual vehicles currently contributing to climate change. But buses can be a tough sell in a sunny city where humidity hovers between 60 and 80 percent year-round. 

      Enter MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the MIT Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center. The result of close collaboration between the two organizations, class 6.900 (Engineering For Impact) challenges EECS students to apply their engineering savvy to real-world problems beyond the MIT campus.

      This spring semester, the real-world problem was heat. 

      Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works Chief Innovation Officer Carlos Cruz-Casas explains: “We often talk about the city we want to live in, about how the proper mix of public transportation, on-demand transit, and other mobility solutions, such as e-bikes and e-scooters, could help our community live a car-light life. However, none of this will be achievable if the riders are not comfortable when doing so.” 

      “When people think of South Florida and climate change, they often think of sea level rise,” says Juan Felipe Visser, deputy director of equity and engagement within the Office of the Mayor in Miami-Dade. “But heat really is the silent killer. So the focus of this class, on heat at bus stops, is very apt.” With little tree cover to give relief at some of the hottest stops, Miami-Dade commuters cluster in tiny patches of shade behind bus stops, sometimes giving up when the heat becomes unbearable. 

      A more conventional electrical engineering course might use temperature monitoring as an abstract example, building sample monitors in isolation and grading them as a merely academic exercise. But Professor Joel Volman, EECS faculty head of electrical engineering, and Joe Steinmeyer, senior lecturer in EECS, had something more impactful in mind.

      “Miami-Dade has a large population of people who are living in poverty, undocumented, or who are otherwise marginalized,” says Voldman. “Waiting, sometimes for a very long time, in scorching heat for the bus is just one aspect of how a city population can be underserved, but by measuring patterns in how many people are waiting for a bus, how long they wait, and in what conditions, we can begin to see where services are not keeping up with demand.”

      Only after that gap is quantified can the work of city and transportation planners begin, Cruz-Casas explains: “We needed to quantify the time riders are exposed to extreme heat and prioritize improvements, including on-time performance improvements, increasing service frequency, or looking to enhance the tree canopy near the bus stop.” 

      Quantifying that time — and the subjective experience of the wait — proved tricky, however. With over 7,500 bus stops along 101 bus routes, Miami-Dade’s transportation network presents a considerable data-collection challenge. A network of physical temperature monitors could be useful, but only if it were carefully calibrated to meet the budgetary, environmental, privacy, and implementation requirements of the city. But how do you work with city officials — not to mention all of bus-riding Miami — from over 2,000 miles away? 

      This is where the PKG Center comes in. “We are a hub and a connector and facilitator of best practices,” explains Jill Bassett, associate dean and director of the center, who worked with Voldman and Steinmeyer to find a municipal partner organization for the course. “We bring knowledge of current pedagogy around community-engaged learning, which includes: help with framing a partnership that centers community-identified concerns and is mutually beneficial; identifying and learning from a community partner; talking through ways to build in opportunities for student learners to reflect on power dynamics, reciprocity, systems thinking, long-term planning, continuity, ethics, all the types of things that come up with this kind of shared project.”

      Through a series of brainstorming conversations, Bassett helped Voldman and Steinmeyer structure a well-defined project plan, as Cruz-Casas weighed in on the county’s needed technical specifications (including affordability, privacy protection, and implementability).

      “This course brings together a lot of subject area experts,” says Voldman. “We brought in guest lecturers, including Abby Berenson from the Sloan Leadership Center, to talk about working in teams; engineers from BOSE to talk about product design, certification, and environmental resistance; the co-founder and head of engineering from MIT spinout Butlr to talk about their low-power occupancy sensor; Tony Hu from MIT IDM [Integrated Design and Management] to talk about industrial design; and Katrina LaCurts from EECS to talk about communications and networking.”

      With the support of two generous donations and a gift of software from Altium, 6.900 developed into a hands-on exercise in hardware/software product development with a tangible goal in sight: build a better bus monitor.

      The challenges involved in this undertaking became apparent as soon as the 6.900 students began designing their monitors. “The most challenging requirement to meet was that the monitor be able to count how many people were waiting — and for how long they’d been standing there — while still maintaining privacy,” says Fabian Velazquez ’23 a recent EECS graduate. The task was complicated by commuters’ natural tendency to stand where the shade goes — whether beneath a tree or awning or snaking against a nearby wall in a line — rather than directly next to the bus sign or inside the bus shelter. “Accurately measuring people count with a camera — the most straightforward choice — is already quite difficult since you have to incorporate machine learning to identify which objects in frame are people. Maintaining privacy added an extra layer of constraint … since there is no guarantee the collected data wouldn’t be vulnerable.”

      As the groups weighed various privacy-preserving options, including lidar, radar, and thermal imaging, the class realized that Wi-Fi “sniffers,” which count the number of Wi-Fi enabled signals in the immediate area, were their best option to count waiting passengers. “We were all excited and ready for this amazing, answer-to-all-our-problems radar sensor to count people,” says Velasquez. “That component was extremely complex, however, and the complexity would have ultimately made my team use a lot of time and resources to integrate with our system. We also had a short time-to-market for this system we developed. We made the trade-off of complexity for robustness.” 

      The weather also posed its own set of challenges. “Environmental conditions were big factors on the structure and design of our devices,” says Yong Yan (Crystal) Liang, a rising junior majoring in EECS. “We incorporated humidity and temperature sensors into our data to show the weather at individual stops. Additionally, we also considered how our enclosure may be affected by extreme heat or potential hurricanes.”

      The heat variable proved problematic in multiple ways. “People detection was especially difficult, for in the Miami heat, thermal cameras may not be able to distinguish human body temperature from the surrounding air temperature, and the glare of the sun off of other surfaces in the area makes most forms of imaging very buggy,” says Katherine Mohr ’23. “My team had considered using mmWave sensors to get around these constraints, but we found the processing to be too difficult, and (like the rest of the class), we decided to only move forward with Wi-Fi/BLE [Bluetooth Low Energy] sniffers.”

      The most valuable component of the new class may well have been the students’ exposure to real-world hardware/software engineering product development, where limitations on time and budget always exist, and where client requests must be carefully considered.  “Having an actual client to work with forced us to learn how to turn their wants into more specific technical specifications,” says Mohr. “We chose deliverables each week to complete by Friday, prioritizing tasks which would get us to a minimum viable product, as well as tasks that would require extra manufacturing time, like designing the printed-circuit board and enclosure.”

      Play video

      Joel Voldman, who co-designed 6.900 (Engineering For Impact) with Joe Steinmeyer and MIT’s Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center, describes how the course allowed students help develop systems for the public good. Voldman is the winner of the 2023 Teaching with Digital Technology Award, which is co-sponsored by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. Video: MIT Open Learning

      Crystal Liang counted her conversations with city representatives as among her most valuable 6.900 experiences. “We generated a lot of questions and were able to communicate with the community leaders of this project from Miami-Dade, who made time to answer all of them and gave us ideas from the goals they were trying to achieve,” she reports. “This project gave me a new perspective on problem-solving because it taught me to see things from the community members’ point of view.” Some of those community leaders, including Marta Viciedo, co-founder of Transit Alliance Miami, joined the class’s final session on May 16 to review the students’ proposed solutions. 

      The students’ thoughtful approach paid off when it was time to present the heat monitors to the class’s client. In a group conference call with Miami-Dade officials toward the end of the semester, the student teams shared their findings and the prototypes they’d created, along with videos of the devices at work. Juan Felipe Visser was among those in attendance. “This is a lot of work,” he told the students following their presentation. “So first of all, thank you for doing that, and for presenting to us. I love the concept. I took the bus this morning, as I do every morning, and was battered by the sun and the heat. So I personally appreciated the focus.” 

      Cruz-Casas agreed: “I am pleasantly surprised by the diverse approach the students are taking. We presented a challenge, and they have responded to it and managed to think beyond the problem at hand. I’m very optimistic about how the outcomes of this project will have a long-lasting impact for our community. At a minimum, I’m thinking that the more awareness we raise about this topic, the more opportunities we have to have the brightest minds seeking for a solution.”

      The creators of 6.900 agree, and hope that their class helps more MIT engineers to broaden their perspective on the meaning and application of their work. 

      “We are really excited about students applying their skills within a real-world, complex environment that will impact real people,” says Bassett. “We are excited that they are learning that it’s not just the design of technology that matters, but that climate; environment and built environment; and issues around socioeconomics, race, and equity, all come into play. There are layers and layers to the creation and deployment of technology in a demographically diverse multilingual community that is at the epicenter of climate change.” More