Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES)

In this Bloomberg TV video aired during the July 4^th Spectacular, Profs. Sangeeta Bhatia and Robert Langer discuss the Greater Boston area’s prowess in medical research. Langer explains that for his research, which is focused on inventing, “new things in chemical engineering that can change people’s lives in medicine, there is no better place.”   

Reporting for WBUR, Karen Weintraub speaks with Profs. Angela Belcher, Sangeeta Bhatia and Paula Hammond about their work developing tiny tools to target cancer cells. Bhatia explains that their collaboration feels like, “a dream team of people that are interested in nanoscience and nanotechnology and focusing those advances on cancer.”

BBC News reporter Roland Pease explores the burgeoning field of synthetic biology. “I think what makes synthetic biology interesting is that it's bringing together engineers and physicists with molecular biologists to model, design, and build molecular components that can then be used to rewire and reprogram living cells for a variety of applications,” explains Prof. James Collins. 

Prof. Emery Brown is a guest on WBUR’s Radio Boston to discuss the feasibility of merging computers with the human brain in an attempt to keep up with artificial intelligence. “Putting the emphasis on using the computational power to understand the physiology and neurocircuitry of the brain is where the success is going to come,” suggests Brown.

TIME reporter Alice Park writes that MIT researchers have modified the CRISPR gene-editing system so that it could be used to diagnose disease. Park explains that the researchers, “used CRISPR to recognize specific substances that bacteria and viruses make. Picking up even the slightest whisper of these products can alert doctors that an infection is active.”

MIT researchers have developed a new technique that uses the CRISPR gene-editing system to diagnose diseases, reports Joel Achenbach for The Washington Post. Achenbach explains that the tool could potentially be used to “detect not only viral and bacterial diseases but also potentially for finding cancer-causing mutations.”

Popular Science reporter Rob Verger writes that MIT researchers have identified a way to prevent the body from developing scar tissue around medical implants. The “discovery involves using drugs to affect the behavior of a type of immune system cell called a macrophage in a way that prevents the buildup of scar tissue.”

In this article and video, Prof. Leia Stirling speaks with Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch about her research aimed at helping astronauts avoid stumbles and falls in space. Stirling explained that she and her colleagues developed a haptic feedback system to “potentially help someone navigate their environment and avoid obstacles at the same time.”

In an article for The New York Times, Shefali Luthra writes about innovative solutions to combat rising prescription drug prices. Luthra speaks with Jose Gomez-Marquez, an instructor at MIT, about his lab, which promotes do-it-yourself medical technology. “If you have extreme health care circumstances, you will find extreme health care ingenuity,” Gomez-Marquez explains. 

Daniel Akst of The Wall Street Journal writes about the wearable device developed by CSAIL researchers that can detect the emotional tone of a conversation. The researchers “are pushing the boundaries by training a computer to take account of such a wide range of factors in making judgments about emotion,” writes Akst. 

Science Friday reporter Ira Flatow and Motherboard reporter Daniel Oberhaus discuss a wearable device developed by CSAIL researchers that can detect the emotional tone of a conversation. Oberhaus explains that the researchers hope the device could one day be “applied with much finer emotional granularity, to the point where you can tell if the story was exciting or funny.” 

In this video, Prof. Leia Stirling and graduate student Alison Gibson speak with Wired about the vibrating boots they developed to help astronauts avoid obstacles. “To be able to provide technologies that can assist the astronauts and actually make a group of people have more capability, that’s really exciting,” explains Stirling. 

CSAIL researchers Tuka Al-Hanai and Mohammad Ghassemi speak to the BBC’s Gareth Mitchell about their system that can detect the tone of a conversation. Ghassemi explains that this research will provide “the first steps toward feedback,” for people who struggle to read social cues. ​

CSAIL researchers have developed a wearable AI system that allows users to detect the tone of a conversation in real-time, reports Janet Burns for Forbes. Using two algorithms to analyze data, the researchers were able to “classify each five-second chunk of conversation as positive, neutral, or negative,” explains Burns.

Dan Misener of CBC News writes that a wearable device developed by MIT researchers detects the tone of conversation by listening to the interaction and measuring the physiological responses of the user. “All of that data is fed into a neural network that's been trained to identify certain cues,” explains Misener.