MIT at Davos: MicroCHIPS & Intelligence

John Santini PhD ’99 is having a really good January. He is traveling to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, because his company, MicroCHIPS, a Bedford, MA-startup, is being recognized as one of the forum's Technology Pioneers. Add to that another $16.5 million investors are providing to continue developing a new implantable medical device capable of delivering drugs inside the body or sensing changing disease states, you’ve got a darn good month.

This new round of funding will help support the company’s first clinical trials, including tests for a no-needle means of testing blood in diabetics, and support a new collaboration that will work on products that deliver drugs to the eye.

Who else from MIT is attending Davos?

A squad of MIT leaders and faculty regularly attend the forum. This year President Susan Hockfield is hosting a session exploring the frontiers of intelligence in natural and artificial systems, at scales ranging from individuals up to societies and down to cells and circuits. Speakers include Associate Professor Josh Tenenbaum PhD ’99, who hopes to establish an Intelligence Initiative at MIT; he was to discuss his work on building machines that learn by generalizing from a few examples, the way children do.

Update: Watch videos of Davos talks by Tim Berners-Lee, Tenenbaum, and other MIT faculty or read a New York Times blog post about their presentation.