Alumni Life

Smack Attack Provides One Cure for Traffic Jams

by Joe McGonegal on May 24, 2013

in Alumni Life, Design, In the News, Learning, Modern Geekhood, Space, Transportation

Like any engineer who has sat in traffic, Gregor Hanuschak MBA ’08 has dreamt of ways to ease the car-commuter’s diurnal ordeal in major cities.

While earning his degree at Sloan, another master’s at Stanford, or in his work for Lockheed Martin and NASA in California and Washington, DC, Hanuschak has sat in plenty of traffic jams.

Even though studying traffic patterns and public transportation solutions are worthy pursuits, Hanuschak wants to relieve drivers’ stress with song—percussion, to be exact.

Smack Attack

The Smack Attack steering wheel drum set. Photo: Gregor Hanuschak.

Launched in April, Hanuschak’s Smack Attack project Reinventing the Wheel aims to do even more for drivers than just cure boredom. A “drum set for your steering wheel,” Smack Attack claims to be a remedy for zoned-out drivers.

The device is easy to use: wrap the flexible drum pad around your steering wheel, plug into your phone’s music library (or use a wireless FM transmitter) and start drumming along.

“Experiencing highway hypnosis firsthand while driving across the US inspired me to design something to fight it and keep drivers alert,” writes Hanuschak on his Kickstarter page. “Sleep researchers are finding the best way to fight highway hypnosis is through auditory or tactile stimulation… and this product provides both!”

The project has drawn the attention of the Discovery Channel, Wired, and dozens of other media outlets. Hanuschak has already raised more than $10,000 for the combination device/app concept.

Hanuschak will put his studies in music, computer engineering, and business to practice as he develops and markets the product this year. He has produced the code for the Smack Attack’s smartphone app, produced music and videos to promote the device, and created a community portal on his website for users to share drum sounds and songs.

“Right now I’m trying to bring my costs down,” Hanuschak said earlier this week, “so I’m now learning from the experts. I’m working with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service for advice on this and entrepreneurial advice in general.”

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In the Name of Art, Umbrellas Light Up the Sky

by Jay London on May 22, 2013

in Campus Culture, Design, Events, Modern Geekhood

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

More than 200 MIT community members armed with LED-enhanced umbrellas took to MIT’s Jack Barry Field on Sunday, May 19, 2013, for “UP: The Umbrella Project,” a collaboration between the MIT CSAIL Lab and the Pilobolus dance troupe.

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

During the UP live performance, each participant was provided with an umbrella equipped with red, green, and blue lights. Each participant used a CSAIL-designed controller to manually change the umbrella’s color throughout the performance and—guided by Pilobolus—walked throughout the field and created what CSAIL called “an ever-changing display of live art.”

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

A roving camera was located above the participants and images from the camera were projected onto a large inflatable screen. (Check out the Boston Globe’s video coverage of UP.)

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Kyle Gilpen '06, MNG '06, PhD '12, a CSAIL post-doctoral associate, says that lab’s research goal is to monitor the "human-robot dance" and match the umbrellas’ robotic algorithms with the behavior of the attendees.

From CSAIL:

"Our work deals with developing algorithms that allow robots to operate independently within a large decentralized network so that the robots can coordinate and work together to accomplish a common task. Through UP, we can study the behaviors of large groups, which can be applied to our research in robotics."

Slice_pic_3

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

UP marked CSAIL's second collaboration with Pilobolus, a renowned dance collaborative that has performed on the Academy Awards, Oprah Winfrey, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In 2012, the groups created Seraph, a performance piece involving human dancers and live robots.

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan

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Fore! Giving Green for DAPER

by Joe McGonegal on May 20, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Campus Culture, Economics, Public Service, Travel

Your favorite search engine will tell you that there are about 225,000 instances of the term “MIT golf”out there. Not overwhelming, but it’s more sizable than a search for “CalTech Golf,” which yields a mere 2,000 results.

Source: Pound Ridge Golf Club.

Pound Ridge Golf Club.

Somewhere deep in that query is Ken Wang ’71, who owns Pound Ridge Golf Club and who is hosting the first annual MIT Golf Outing on May 20 in Westchester County, New York. The tournament will benefit MIT’s Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation.

Offering his course to MIT for a day caps years of service to the Institute.  Currently a member of the corporation, Wang is also a former Alumni Association board president, MIT Club of New York president, and member of over a dozen visiting committees and advisory boards over the years.

But Wang is always eager to advance MIT’s brand into the world of athletics.

“I really believe that as MIT evolves, and the people involved with it evolve, it’s important that we start doing more mainstream stuff,” says Wang. “Plus, it’s just good fresh air.”

Pound Ridge has been a favorite among New York celebrities and politicians over the years. Its challenging 146-slope design came from Pete Dye, who also designed TPC Sawgrass and other world-famous courses.  Wang bought the course in 2008; four years later, Pound Ridge was named second among the New York City area’s top courses by Golf Magazine.

At the tournament to support DAPER, MIT golfers will face Pound Ridge’s signature boulder in the middle of the 13th fairway and pray for luck on the backboard headstone behind the 15th green. But Wang won’t be among them.

“I’ll be there, but I won’t be golfing,” he says, adding, “I’d rather not have my game seen in public!”

Asked to name the best golfer in MIT history, Wang replies, “He’s going to kill me for saying it, but I’d say Robert Turner ’74, who’ll be there. He’s a very good golfer.”

Ken Wang '71. Photo: Tanit Sakakini.

Ken Wang ’71. Photo: Tanit Sakakini.

In an interview on the Golf Trips blog, Wang lists the Blue Monster at Doral as a favorite course and says he prefers Jack Nicklaus over Arnold Palmer.

As for Tiger Woods, Wang says, “I don’t necessarily approve of the shenanigans, but I love Tiger. He’s the most important person in the sport.”

When he’s not thinking about golf, Wang serves as president of the U.S. Summit Corporation, founded by his father CC Wang SM ’45 and three of his classmates. Between these two roles, Wang puts his MIT economics degree to good use.

Wang didn’t golf during his years at MIT, though he loved playing intramural hockey. At times, his relationship with DAPER was less than appreciative. “I didn’t pass the swim test, although I’d like you to know that I could have. I just wasn’t a very competent swimmer, so I took swimming because I hoped it would make me better. I was finally able to splash my way through it.”

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Robot Bartender: Should You Still Leave a Tip?

by Jay London on May 17, 2013

in Engineering, In the News, Modern Geekhood, Research

Makr-ShakrThe most prolific bartenders have knowledge of thousands of different drink recipes, but a how about a googol? A new robotic bartender developed by MIT’s SENSEable City Lab makes that claim and more.

The Makr Shakr is a three-armed robotic barman created through a partnership with Coca-Cola and Bacardi USA. The robot’s programmable  mixing system claims an infinite number of drinks and users can submit their own through a mobile app.

From dezeen magazine:

“Users will download an app on their handheld devices and mix ingredients as virtual barmen. They can gain inspiration by viewing other users’ recipes and comments before sending in their drink of choice. The cocktail is then crafted by three robotic arms, whose movements reproduce every action of a barman—from the shaking of a Martini to the muddling of a Mojito, and even the thin slicing of a lemon garnish.”

The Makr Shakr was previewed during Milan Design Week in April and made its official debut at the Google I/O annual developer conference in San Francisco on May 15. The machine was created at Google’s request. A year earlier, they asked the inventors to create a device that best exemplifies participatory design.

The robotic arms mimic the movements of a bartender—a very graceful bartender. The designers programmed the robot’s gestures by recording the movements of Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle.

Five SENSEable researchers helped develop the Makr Shakr, including project leader and graduate student Yaniv Turgeman. SENSEable’s 35-person team includes associate director Assaf Biderman ’05, Otto Ng ’12, Dietman Offenhuber ’08, Anthony Vanky SM ’11. Bacardi also has MIT ties; Joaquin E. Bacardi III MBA ‘98 is the company’s president and CEO.

Inspired by Coca-Cola’s Freestyle touchscreen beverage dispenser, the Makr Shakr can create alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. The app’s customization system can monitor alcohol consumption and blood alcohol levels and help users self-monitor their intake. Users can also share their recipes and drink photos.

SENSEable City director Carlo Ratti told Boston Magazine that the Makr Shakr will not replace human bartenders and is “more a research platform aimed at the third industrial revolution, where anyone can design and produce.”

Fear not, barkeeps. There are no plans to make the Makr Shakr commercially available.

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Karen Kinnaman ’06: A Hero Among Us

by Jay London on May 15, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Events, In the News

Karen Kinnaman '06 (left) honored alongside colleague Heather Studley at the April 26 Celtics game.

Karen Kinnaman ’06 (left) honored alongside colleague Heather Studley by the Celtics. (Photo: Boston Celtics)

For eleven months per year, Karen Kinnaman ’06—a soon-to-be chief resident of the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency Program—is based out of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. For the other month, she can be found at Mount Auburn Hospital, a community hospital located in a quiet part of Cambridge, which is where she was on Friday, April 19, 2013.

The early morning of April 19 lives in infamy—the date suspected Boston Marathon bombers engaged in a violent standoff with local police officers in Watertown, MA, a Boston suburb less than one mile from Mount Auburn.

While working in the ER, Kinnaman helped save the life of an individual who was wounded in the shootout. For her efforts, she was part of a group of first responders honored by the Boston Celtics as “Heroes Among Us” during their playoff game with the New York Knicks on Friday, April 26. (The Knicks won, 90-76.)

Karen Kinnaman '06

Karen Kinnaman ’06

“It was a great honor—so overwhelming,” she says. “The emotions from April 19 were still very, very raw. Receiving that fan support was an experience I’ll never forget.”

A teaching hospital, Mount Auburn’s emergency room is not often home to large-scale trauma.

“We weren’t given much heads up, which was a benefit because we had no time to worry, only to react,” she says. “What happened in the emergency room that night was a positive story of hope. It was a testament to the hospital and the people who work there.”

A four-year athlete at MIT, Kinnaman captained the women’s basketball team and earned varsity letters in soccer, track, and cross country. During her senior year, she was named the Malcolm G. Kispert MIT Scholar Athlete of the Year. A course 7 (biology) major at MIT, Kinnaman says her undergraduate education and athletic background provided a strong foundation for her medical career. She attributes much of her professional success to lessons learned at MIT.

Kinnaman_2

“Being able to stay calm under pressure is something I learned from to playing sports at MIT,” she says. “Working in an ER parallels the experience on an athletic field: following your instincts and working together towards a common goal. The emotional highs and lows that take place in an emergency room are similar to the types of emotions you feel in sports.”

At MGH, she has a constant reminder of her time at MIT. Her former basketball assistant coach, Kelly Stubbs, is a nurse in MGH’s emergency department.

“My coaches at MIT always believed in me,” she says. “They instilled in me how to be a good leader in chaotic situations.”

For most Celtics fans, a blowout loss to the Knicks would leave little to cheer about. But the ceremony was a compelling moment that New York and Boston fans shared together.

“I’m actually a huge Knicks fan,” she says. “But on that night I was all in for Boston. It was a perfect night.”

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Big Brain, Big Screen: Alum Stars on New Discovery Channel Show

by Joe McGonegal on May 13, 2013

in Alumni Life, Design, Engineering, In the News, Learning, Modern Geekhood

Alison Wong ’03 spent several weeks last year working on a missile defense system for thwarting rocket attacks.

Wong also designed methods to disengage car engines as they approached military checkpoints, one-person shelters capable of withstanding fire and extreme winds, and contraptions to prevent explosions in colliding vehicles.

Alison Wong '03. Photo: Discovery Channel.

Alison Wong ’03. Photo: Discovery Channel.

Wong did all this on the set of the Discovery Channel’s Big Brain Theory, a reality TV show that premiered in April and that will continue its run this spring on Wednesday nights.

Wong is one of ten contestants on the reality show and one of its two female stars.

After answering a casting call a year ago for the new show, which is hosted by Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar fame, Wong flew to Los Angeles for the full-immersion reality TV program. There, she lived with other contestants in a community house while solving those puzzling challenges and the occasional interpersonal dramas native to the medium of reality TV. The show’s top prize is $50,000 and a one-year contract at a top design firm.

Wong jumped at the opportunity to combine her passions in design and engineering. “Engineering is a team sport and this show is about teamwork,” she says.

At MIT, Wong majored in mechanical engineering with an architecture minor in the early years of course 2-A. She penned two regular comic strips for The Tech and did UROPs with David R. Wallace and the Media Lab.

A designer at heart, Wong pursued a master’s in design at Stanford and spent five years at IDEO as a principal designer. In 2010 she launched her own firm, Integral Design. She is currently working on bringing Keyprop, a key-ring tripod for smartphones, to market.

On Big Brain Theory’s first episode, contestants focused on the colliding-vehicle conundrum, with Wong leading efforts in the design and blueprint phase to keep an explosive box on the back of a pickup truck from reaching 25 g.

“The Discovery Channel makes quality shows, and I’m proud of them for taking a risk on promoting a show like this,” Wong says. “There’s nothing like it on TV. I’m honored to be among them.”

Wong got the full Hollywood treatment last month. Discovery hosted a red-carpet premiere for the show’s cast at design firm WET’s headquarters in LA.

Though Wong doesn’t rule out future roles on screen, her focus remains on her design career and using this experience to inspire others.

“I’m open to a lot of things, but I’m mostly trying to leverage this to inspire girls,” she says. “I just talked at a local school and showed students some of my 3D prints and products. I want to lead by example and show them that math and science can be really creative industries.”

To judge the contestants’ efforts in the first episode of Big Brain Theory, Discovery brought in another alum—astronaut Michael Massimino ME ’88—who critiqued Wong’s design and participated in the elimination vote at the end of the show.

Rest assured, he did not vote Wong off.

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Senior Gets Animated about the Infinite Connection

by Joe McGonegal on May 12, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, Classroom, Media, Modern Geekhood, Student Life

Did you see Jeffrey Lin’s video tutorial on how to navigate the MIT Alumni Directory?

MIT’s Class of 2013 should find it useful next month as they earn their official listing in it, and the thousands of alumni who haven’t yet logged in to the Infinite Connection should check it out as well. You know who you are.Jeffrey Lin shot

Lin didn’t just make the video for the $300 gift card prize offering in the MIT Alumni Association contest. An avid designer, Lin enjoys fooling with film technologies and says he made this video on the night before deadline.

“I saw the listing and figured I had a shot,” he said. “And I thought, ‘what better way to do this quickly than with animation?’ I grabbed a Wacom tablet, which you can hook to your laptop and use for drawing by hand. I used QuickTime screen capturing.”

A big fan of RSA Animate, Lin designed the directory tutorial with its instructional, straightforward style in mind, telling the story of a login through clever animated slides.

“I hadn’t really done something like it before and wanted to see how it would work out,” he recalled.

Whether experimenting with live-action or animation, Lin enjoys storytelling. His short documentary on the MIT lightweight crew team and his moving profile of Emma Nelson ’14 demonstrate his attention to a film’s narrative arc.

Though Lin is a course 4 (architecture) major, he has enjoyed Professor Vivek Bald’s documentary filmmaking course and Angel Nevarez’s intro to video class. In the latter, Lin directed A Proper Meal, which won the undergraduate CMS Media Spectacle Award last year.

Lin has also been active in the Asian American Association and the DynaMIT engineering camp, where he mentors middle school-aged students in math and science.

Whether Lin pursues film or architecture or design or none of the above, he clearly knows how to use the alumni directory for reaching out to fellow beavers. During IAP in 2011, he interned at the Brand Union in New York, working under its North American CEO Robert Scalea ’77, an experience he chronicled on Slice.

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Who is Iron Man?

by Jay London on May 10, 2013

in Alumni Life, In the News, Media, Modern Geekhood, Student Life

Tony Stark, class of 1987 (maybe), proudly sporting his Brass Rat.

Tony Stark, class of 1987 (maybe), proudly sporting his Brass Rat.

It’s been established that Tony Stark is MIT’s greatest (fictional) alumnus. In fact, Stark can be seen wearing his Brass Rat in multiple scenes in the first Iron Man movie. The film’s director, Jon Favreau, once said of Stark, “He’s somebody who created a suit using his own intelligence and sweat of his brow. I would love for that to make being an engineer cool—that  people might want to go to MIT instead of being on MTV.”

A proud affiliation notwithstanding, little is known about Stark’s time at MIT. His academic record is sealed and existing public information is inconsistent. MIT Admissions tentatively lists Stark as receiving his undergraduate degree in 1987 but Marvel Comics claims he received two master’s degrees in engineering by age 19. Confusing matters more, a LinkedIn profile for Tony Stark indicates he received doctorates in engineering physics and artificial intelligence.

These contradictory statements lead to one question: Just who was Tony Stark during his time at MIT?

Boston.com’s Radio BDC blog helped answer this question earlier this week. In honor of the release of the third Iron Man film, the blog tracked down real-life Bostonians—including one former MIT director—who shared their encounters with a young Stark during the mid-80s.

A sample of the memories includes:

  • “I saw him a few times at the chess boards near Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square. There was this guy down there, a chess master, and you could give him five or ten bucks and he’d play you a game. A couple of times I remember [Tony] breezing in and throwing money on the table, and kind of wiping the floor with the guy.”
  • “No one really knew him, he was just a rich kid. Everyone wanted him around, though, because he’d always bring something fun for the party.”
  • “I remember him at after-parties on Thayer Street. He was up later than anyone else. But you could always get a ride home with him, because he always had a car.”

Perhaps the most poignant recollection comes from Henry Jenkins, the former co-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies.

From “Bostonians sharing their memories of MIT class of ’87 grad Tony Stark:”

“Some students are larger than life—they leave a trace across the entire campus, and people talk about them well after they have left the building, so to speak. Stark was one of those people.”

“And don’t get me started about the hacks that have been ascribed to Stark through the years. I have heard all kinds of claims about what Stark put on the Great Dome to the ways he rewired the elevators in the Green Building. They can’t all be true, can they?”

Read more about Tony Stark’s (fictional) time at MIT on the Radio BDC blog. Thanks to Harbo Jensen PhD ’74 for contributing to this story.

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Running Again: Alum Helps Victims Dream of Next Year’s Marathon

by Joe McGonegal on May 9, 2013

in Alumni Life, Design, Engineering, In the News, Learning, Modern Geekhood, Research

My doctor told me recently to stop running. He said my knees, like most human knees, have had enough of high-impact exercise after twenty years of road races.

He’s the third doctor to tell me so. Maybe this time it will sink in. In a small, perhaps completely incomparable way, I’ve felt the same zeal to overcome the body’s limitations that those who have endured paralysis, severe arthritis, or amputations experience. We all have that need to mend, overcome the pain, and return to the challenge.

Hugh Herr SM '93. Photo: Webb Chappell.

Hugh Herr SM ’93. Photo: Webb Chappell.

So when I heard interviews with victims of the Boston Marathon bombing in the past few weeks, who, despite severe injury and amputation, vowed to run the race again, I nodded my head. I understood.

MIT Media Lab Associate Professor Hugh Herr SM ’93 heard the same declarations coming from bombing victims this month. He, too, understood.

But Herr, himself a double amputee, is in a unique place to help. Partnering with No Barriers USA, Herr and his Biomechatronics Research Group intend to support any marathoner who, despite severe injury or limb loss as a result of the bombings, aims to run again next year.

No Barriers, a nationwide nonprofit with a goal of improving lives through assistive technology, launched the No Barriers for Boston fund on April 26. It hopes to raise $500,000 to support investments in sport-specific prosthetic limbs to help survivors run, bike, swim, or otherwise compete athletically again.

“Assistive technology makes a profound impact on the lives of people struggling with physical disability,” Herr wrote in a May 3 post on a Wall Street Journal blog. “It created a passion in me for science and engineering that has since defined my career.”

Herr’s award-winning team focuses on creating “intimate extensions of the human body” that react with ease to the nervous system’s electromechanical commands as fluidly as natural limbs. With fourteen patents relating to the field of bionics, Herr hopes to make an array of such advanced prosthetics commercially available and affordable.

What about knees like mine? In a New York Times interview last week, Herr speculated that someday, “smart” pants that act like a second skin on one’s legs might make running a painless, lifelong pursuit.  My joints like the sound of that.

An avid athlete himself, Herr says he intends to run alongside his fellow amputees in next year’s Boston Marathon.

“We will participate as a beautifully defiant statement to the world that we the people will not be intimidated, brought down, diminished, conquered or stopped by acts of violence,” he writes.

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Faculty Forum Online: New Research on the Brain, May 15, 2013

by Jay London on May 8, 2013

in Events, In the News, Learning, Research

Update: View a video of this presentation.

The human brain is, perhaps, the most complex organism to have evolved on this planet. Thinking about the brain raises a broad array of questions: what is the mind, what is intelligence, how does the brain discover order from complex sensory inputs, and so on.

In the next Faculty Forum Online broadcast, Professor James DiCarlo, head of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, will comment on the department’s pioneering work. DiCarlo, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, will introduce his current research and take live questions from the worldwide MIT community on Wednesday, May 15, from noon to 12:30 p.m. (EDT).

Register for this free event—New Research on the Brain—to receive the link for live viewing. After the event, return to Slice and continue the conversation in the comments.

Professor James DiCarlo

Professor James DiCarlo

About James DiCarlo

James DiCarlo examines the complex network of brain regions that allows one to recognize vast numbers of objects rapidly and effortlessly. DiCarlo also develops computational models of the brain with the ultimate goal of building a computer simulation of the brain’s capacity that could provide insights into the sensory deficits that occur after stroke or brain injury.

His lab seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying visual object recognition—specifically how sensory input is transformed by the brain from an initial representation (essentially a photograph on the retina) to a more powerful representation that can allow the brain to solve the computationally difficult problem of object recognition.

DiCarlo joined the McGovern Institute in 2002. He received his bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, his doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins University, and did postdoctoral work at Baylor College of Medicine. He is a past recipient of John Hopkins’ Martin and Carol Macht Young Investigator Research Prize, the Alfred P. Sloan Research fellowship, and the McKnight Foundation’s Neuroscience Scholar Award.

RELATED

Video: Meet James DiCarlo, from MIT TechTV
James DiCarlo to head Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, from MIT News
McGovern Institute Profile: James DiCarlo

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