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Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
Space Exploration Initiative
Looking beyond smart cities
With(in) is a multi-stage project that includes an exhibit, installation, qualitative exploration, and visual storytelling.This is a...
Extending human and computer abilities in sensing, communication, and actuation through signals and networks
Maggie Coblentz leads research and design on interplanetary gastronomy at the Space Exploration Initiative, where she is developing ...
Maggie Coblentz is developing “The Interplanetary Cookbook”—a collection of speculative recipes, tools for eating, and sensory experience...
Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg)
The OpenAg™ Food Server is a shipping container-sized, controlled environment agriculture technology that can be built to utilize hydropo...
The OpenAg™ Personal Food Computer is a tabletop-sized, controlled environment agriculture technology platform that uses robotic systems ...
Flavor, in addition to making our food delicious, is one way of sensing biochemical richness. A highly flavorful plant generally con...
New flavors may evolve as earth foods migrate to outer space. A collaboration between Maggie Coblentz at the MIT Media Lab and Joshua Eva...
Fermentation in Space: From the Microbiome to the Envirome This research highlights the many opportunities to bring our rich culture...
Vespers is a collection of masks exploring what it means to design (with) life. From the relic of the death mask to a contemporary living...
Designing for, with, and by nature
Humans are headed for the cosmos, and we’re taking our appetites with us. What will fill the void when we leave Earth behind?
Who needs best-by labels when your package is sensing the food inside it?
This project aims to create a modular platform for exploring micro-kitchens that are culture specific. Cooking is a personal experience t...
Seamlessly coupling the worlds of bits and atoms by giving dynamic physical form to digital information and computation
We talk a lot about the appliances that go into the future kitchen—but what about the design of the space itself?
Noah Wilson-Rich suggests that urban beekeeping might play a role in revitalizing both a city and a species.
Bees are dying off in record numbers, but ecologist Noah Wilson-Rich is interested in something else: Where are bees healthy and thriving?
Creating technology for social change
Building socially engaging robots and interactive technologies to help people live healthier lives, connect with others, and learn better
Hamama is a Media Lab spinoff company founded by City Science alum Daniel Goodman and Camille Richman.
An exhibition at the Barbican in London features work from OpenAg, the Mediated Matter group, Joy Buolamwini, and more.
Nine MIT principal investigators will receive grants totaling over $1 million for research focused on global food and water challenges.
MIT researchers have found a way to check many items instantly, non-invasively, and from a distance—using the RFID tags.
On the BBC’s Follow the Food, OpenAg head Caleb Harper and other experts discuss how technology is transforming our food systems.
Caleb Harper discusses how machine learning-enabled "food computers" were used to find the optimal conditions to grow basil.
Want the best Caprese salad or pesto you ever tasted? MIT researchers say they may be able to help.
Johnson, Arielle J., Elliot Meyerson, John de la Parra, Timothy L. Savas, Risto Miikkulainen, and Caleb B. Harper. “Flavor-Cyber-Agriculture: Optimization of Plant Metabolites in an Open-Source Control Environment through Surrogate Modeling.” PLOS ONE 14, no. 4 (April 3, 2019): e0213918. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213918.
Machine learning can reveal optimal growing conditions to maximize taste and other features.
Fadel Adib talks to CBS about a project from the Signal Kinetics group that aims to democratize food quality and safety testing.
News coverage of the RFIQ project
We developed a concept of transformative appetite, where edible 2D films made of common food materials (protein, cellulose or starch) can...
We have developed a wireless system that leverages the inexpensive RFID tags already on hundreds of billions of products to sense potent...
We now have more challenging choices to make than simply whether to be vegan, pescatarian or carnivore, thanks to technology.
An active and passionate community of over 2,500 people spread across 62 countries have rallied around the open source platform.
Simple, scalable wireless system uses the RFID tags on billions of products to sense contamination.
"Food computers" can tell us everything we need to know about what we grow and eat.
OpenAg is committed to changing the way the world thinks about farming and food—and we need your help! As an open source project, we beli...
The Gender Shades project pilots an intersectional approach to inclusive product testing for AI.Algorithmic Bias PersistsGender Shades is...
It’s Thanksgiving season again, and the double shadow on our great American food holiday is feast and famine, both. A bounteous industria...
E Short, K Swift-Spong, J Greczek, A Ramachandran, A Litoiu, E Grigore, D Feil- Seifer, S Shuster, JJ Lee, et al (2014). "How to Train Your DragonBot: Socially Assistive Robots for Teaching Children About Nutrition Through Play." In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Edinburgh, UK).
Johnson, Arielle J. "Artisanal food microbiology." Nature microbiology 1 (2016): 16039.
Caleb Harper's TED Talk
The tech-filled greenhouses can adjust growing conditions over and over again until they find the combinations
Sheets of gelatin transform into 3-D shapes when dunked in water; could save food shipping costs.
Caleb Harper is interviewed at the 2016 Aspen Ideas Festival.