In the News

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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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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Shaking Things Up For Urban Startups

by Joe McGonegal on May 6, 2013

in Alumni Life, In the News, Management

Over 75% of Americans live in urban areas, a number that has risen steadily in the past century.

Ensuring that cities are comfortable places to live for those growing numbers is tough. How best to house everyone? Get them to commute in eco-friendly ways? Provide families and children with fresh, healthy food?

Julie Lein GM '12. Photo: Sloan Women in Management.

Julie Lein GM ’12. Photo: Sloan Women in Management.

Doing so—on a large scale—requires creative thinking and smart solutions. Two MIT Sloan alumnae, Clara Brenner GM ’12 and Julie Lein GM ’12, aim to fund such thinking with a new startup based in San Francisco.

Tumml, which launched this spring and which comes from a Yiddish word for “shaking things up,” arose out of a study the two women did while at Sloan. After surveying startups nationwide, they found that a mere 15% of those that focused on urban problems got seed funding.

Brenner and Lein think of Tumml as an “urban impact accelerator.” Calling attention to that low result in the venture capital community, the two alums aim to foster creative entrepreneurs who are eager to make city living better. Brenner’s background in real-estate and alternative financing has combined well with Lein’s background in urban education and nonprofit advocacy in forming Tumml.

“At the same time that more people than ever are living in cities, the fiscal climate means that cities are less able to provide certain services and quality of life,” Lein said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Entrepreneurs can shoulder that load. There is such a market opportunity here. This is where entrepreneurship should enter, there is so much they could do. We were curious why more entrepreneurs are not stepping up to fill the gap.”

Tumml’s first project will be hosting ten “promising, for-profit companies” to work in their San Francisco office, appropriately named The Hatchery. Each for-profit selected for the 12-week residency will receive $30,000 in free services along with office space as they conceive of and launch their solution.

At the end of each cohort, Tumml will work with startups to pitch their projects to investors, potential clients, or government agencies.

“There is not necessarily a place for entrepreneurs to go right now when they want to solve a problem in their own backyard,” Lein said. “We want to be the place that addresses those needs, and create a meaningful pipeline of urban impact entrepreneurs to prove that these companies have the ability to succeed, and people have the ability to shape our cities in important ways.”

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The Bombing Heard Round the World?

by Joe McGonegal on May 2, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, In the News, Learning, Media

Just a few blocks from where the Boston Marathon bombing suspects allegedly murdered an MIT police officer, a panel of experts convened on May 1 for a conversation entitled Marathon Bombing: The Global Context.

Who is to blame for the intelligence gap between Russia and the United States before the bombing? Was the bombing an act of religious fundamentalism? Will this event make Boston into a more monitored city, like London, with cameras on every street corner? The panel explored these and other questions on Wednesday.

MIT Security Studies Program senior advisor Jeanne Guillemin discussing the marathon bombing.

MIT Security Studies Program senior advisor Jeanne Guillemin discussing the marathon bombing.

Moderated by Ford International Professor of Political Science and Center for International Studies director Richard Samuels, five MIT professors and scholars provided several contexts surrounding the bombers’ ideology and theorized about the policy impacts the bombing might have in the weeks, months, and years to come.

MIT history professor Elizabeth Wood best summed up the purpose of the Starr Forum talk.

“Unless we understand the perpetrators of violence as individuals situated in history, as individuals situated in causes that are larger than their own biographies, we cannot understand what happened last week at the Boston Marathon,” Wood said.

How much did being natives of the Caucasus region influence the Tsarnaev brothers? Wood and Carol Saivetz, a research affiliate at the MIT Security Studies Program, explored this question, describing the past century of Chechnya’s tensions with Russia, highlighting how the Tsarnaev family lived through each turbulent decade.

Saivetz’s slide, Tsarnaev Chronology: A Tale of Two Brothers, detailed the family’s moves throughout the region since 1944, when Stalin deported thousands of Chechens to work camps. The family’s move to Dhagestan in 2001, when the boys were eight and fifteen years old, was a result of the violence in the second Chechen War, Saivetz said.

Bakyt Beshimov, a visiting scholar at the Security Studies Program and a native of the Caucasus region, certainly links the Tsarnaevs’ mindset to their homeland.

Beshimov watched every video, read every internet post, and listened to every song that inspired Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “His inner search was, in my view, affected by the struggle in his own country, jihadism in the Caucasus and the global Islamic radical ideology,” said Beshimov. “This mindset puts many Chechens into a vicious circle of revenge.”

Several panelists conjectured that the bombing might justify crackdowns and human rights abuses in Russia, particularly ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year. Then there were the questions of what precedents the Boston response will set in cities around the globe.

CIS research associate and assistant professor at Boston College Peter Krause PhD ’11 mused, “Is a lockdown something we’re prepared to do again and again? What about domestic drones for national security or the government reading our email?”

“I’m not going to counsel one way or another on the [issue of] over- or under-reaction,” Krause said. “I’m confident about this: that understanding when and why these things happen is going to lead to better answers as a society…and I’m encouraged by the people who are here today.”

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“Dilbit” Oil Articles Net Pulitzer Prize for Alumna

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on April 19, 2013

in Alumni Life, In the News, Public Service

Lisa Song '08, SM '09

Lisa Song ’08, SM ’09

Lisa Song ’08, SM ’09 won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting along with two other writers working for InsideClimate, a web-based news organization that covers clean energy, carbon energy, nuclear energy, and environmental science.

The Pulitzer honored their reporting on problems with the regulation of America’s oil pipelines, focusing on potential ecological dangers posed by diluted bitumen (or “dilbit”), a controversial form of oil.

Song, who earned an undergraduate degree in earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences and then a master’s degree in MIT’s graduate program in science writing, coauthored articles on “The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard Of.” That project explored the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010 and examined broader pipeline safety issues.

Of course the writing program is cheering.

“We are thrilled to hear that Lisa is part of the talented journalistic team that has contributed so brilliantly to the national media discussion of our environmental future,” says Jim Paradis, head, Comparative Media Studies/Writing Department. “I congratulate Lisa and all the members of the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing who helped her on her way.”

Another MIT SHASS science writing alumna, Carolyn Johnson SM ’04, was part of the Boston Globe team that was a finalist in that same category. The team was  cited for their coverage of the deadly national outbreak of fungal meningitis traced to a compounding pharmacy in suburban Boston, revealing how the medical regulatory system failed to safeguard patients.

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Are You Ready for Wearable Computers?

by Joe McGonegal on April 17, 2013

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

It’s an exciting time to be Thad Starner ’91, SM ’95, PhD ’99.

For over twenty years, Starner has been one of only a handful of pioneers to go where no humans have gone before, sporting a wearable computer in front of his eye.

Google Glass, due to be released in late 2013.

Google Glass, due to be released in late 2013. Photo: Google.

Later this year, Starner is about to have a lot of company. With the launch of Google Glass sometime in late 2013, Starner’s 20-year beta test will end.

In late February, a group of Google Explorers,  who essentially won the right to be early adopters, started seeing their world as Starner does, through a computer screen.

Starner designed and modified his own version over the years; Google’s first customers paid $1,500 for the off-the-shelf version that Starner helped design. Google Glass strives to contain everything in one device: microphone, camera, CPU and a mini-projector that will flash calendar reminders, text messages, directions and whatever else you wish it to onto a half-inch transparent area of one lens.

Serving as Technical Lead/Manager for Google alongside some former classmates, Starner has given talks on wearable computing for some time. He is quick to note, however, that we have all used wearable computers—in the form of heart-rate monitors, wristwatches and, of course, cell phones.

Long before there was industry research and symposia on the topic of wearable computers, Starner roamed the streets of Cambridge with his early model, exploring the intersections of virtual and real worlds—while crossing back and forth over a very real Mass Ave.

glass2

A typical view from a Google Glass headset. Photo: Google.

“We really believe that there’s much more convenient ways of having a computer augment your life than to take a phone out of your pocket,” Starner said in an interview this month. With a wearable computer, he says, “You get really good at using 30-second chunks of time.”

Aside from Google Glass, Starner’s lab at Georgia Tech, where he is director of the Contextual Computing Group, works on other types of wearable computing, like a glove with finger pulsations that can teach you to play Beethoven while you multitask. That glove also does wonders for stroke victims, Starner learned.

Clearly, wearable computing can make such profound impacts in people’s lives. Until then, Starner will have to be patient, fielding all the controversial questions about privacy and copyright and identity when the world puts on its glasses for the first time.

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