Tech Innovation on Display at South By Southwest Festival

The South By Southwest Festival (SXSW), held annually in March, focuses on innovative cultural breakthroughs in music, film, and interactive technologies. As a haven for burgeoning creators and prospective entrepreneurs, it’s no surprise that MIT’s presence was felt throughout the event.

MIT students, alumni, and faculty were honored and presented research at the festival, including three Institute-related groups who won SXSW Accelerator Awards, $4,000 prizes that recognize cutting-edge products released in the last year.

A list of MIT’s involvement at SXSW is below. Did we miss someone who was honored and/or presented? Let us know, and we’ll add it to our MIT@SXSW list.

Media Lab Professor Sandy Pentland '82, Nadav Aharony SM '08, PhD '12, ESD, graduate candidate Cody Sumter, and Alan Gardner '05 won the Accelerator Award in the News-Related Technology category for Funf, an open sensing framework that allows Android developers to easily collect and use information recorded with a mobile device.

Anmol Madan SM '05, PhD '10 and Karan Singh MBA '11, also of the Media Lab, took the Accelerator prize in the Health Technologies category for Ginger.io, a company which harnesses user data from mobile phones to make inferences about health and wellness.

Ash Martin MBA ’10 is co-founder of Viztu Technologies, which creates three-dimensional models of photos and videos and won the Accelerator Award in the Innovative Web Technologies category.

Principal research scientist Judy Brewer and Little Devices Lab program director Jose Gomez-Marquez were honored with a 2012 Dewey Winburn Community Service Award, which, according to SXSW, honors community activists who use new media technologies to help level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots in society.

As Director of the Web Accessibility Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium, Brewer coordinates the development of consensus-based solutions to make the web accessible for people with disabilities.

Gomez-Marquez, the 2009 Technology Review Man of the Year, helped develop the Aerovax Drug Delivery System, a device for mass delivery of inhalable drugs and vaccines to remote populations, and the X out TB program (now Adhere.io), which uses novel diagnostics and mobile technology to increase tuberculosis therapy in developing countries.

Gomez-Marquez also received a SXSW Interactive Scholarship for his work on MEDIK, a medical device set designed for doctors treating patients in areas where electricity and other basic services are unavailable.

Peter Gloor, a research scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence, presented “Coolhunting and Coolfarming with Social Media” during SXSW’s Interactive Session Spotlight and addressed topics on marketing and advertisements, and the factors and metrics that determine viral-ness or cool-ness.

SXSW selected six MIT-related proposals to be presented during the conference:

• Andrés Monroy-Hernández PhD '07 presented Designing a Creative Online Community for Kids.
• Molly Sauter, a research assistant in Comparative Media Studies, presented Policy Effects of Media Portrayals of Hacktivists.
• Luis Benitez '01, a social software product manager at IBM, presented Enterprise Social Media: Five Emerging Trends.
• Marguerite Avery, senior acquisitions editor at MIT Press, presented Visualize This! Data and the Future of Research.
• Adam Pruden, a research associate in MIT’s Sensible City Lab, presented Detached Messages: Media May Smack Us in the Face!
• Nadav Aharony presented Investigating Social Mechanisms with Mobile Phones.
• Media Lab director Joichi Ito, researcher Andy Bardagjy, research scientist Catherine Havasi '03, graduate student Yadid Ayzenberg and doctoral candidate Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye presented MIT Media Lab: Making Connections.