Publication Research

Combinatorial hydrogel library enables identification of materials that mitigate the foreign body response in primates.

Vegas, A., et al. Combinatorial hydrogel library enables identification of materials that mitigate the foreign body response in primates., Nature Biotechnology, 34: 345-352, 2016. PMCID: PMC4904301
Course Research

Decoders 1.7: Introduction to Microfabrication

Style: Individual; PersonalThis class is graded P/D/F. To pass, you must: (i) attend all the cleanroom sessions, (ii) complete the sections…
Publication Research

Experimentally Verified Finite Element Modeling and Analysis of a Conformable Piezoelectric Sensor

Amiri, N., Tasnim, F., Tavakkoli Anbarani, M., Dagdeviren, C.†, Karami, A.†, “Experimentally Verified Finite Element Modeling and Analysis of a Conformable Piezoelectric Sensor”, Smart Materials and Structures, 30 085017, 2021.
Project Research

Bio-Digital Wearables or Space Health Enhancement

Living in space could have significant physical and mental impacts on astronauts. Wearables have the potential to play a critical role in m…
Article Research

Life in space: Preparing for an increasingly tangible reality

The Space Exploration Initiative supports research across and beyond MIT in two microgravity flights this spring.
Project Research

Self Assembling Space Frames

Ever wish you could toss your folded up tent and have it self-assemble mid-air?  Well...you can. In a zero gravity environment.Self As…
Project Research

H0TP0T

By Larissa Zhou and Adam ZacharFood is crucial to maintaining the physical and psychological health of humans in space. Eating food pr…
Project Research

Panspermia

By Nancy Valladares and Rae Yuping HsuThis project is an art performance that seeks to rethink imaginaries of multispecies surviv…
Project Research

Miniature Optical Steered Antenna for Intersatellite Communication (MOSAIC)

The Miniature Optical Steered Antenna for Intersatellite Communications (MOSAIC)By Shreeyam KackerThe Miniature Optical Steered Antenn…
Project Research

Moving Liquids With No Moving Parts

Solid-state microfrabricated devices are in development to replace contemporary heavy mechanical components for use in spacecraft propellan…
Project Research

Ø-scillation: oscillating chemistry in zero gravity and beyond

How did life originate? Nobody knows. Life might not even be native to our Earth - it might have come from asteroids or the interstellar me…
Project Research

AgriFuge

By Somayajulu Dhulipala and Manwei ChanAs humanity explores deeper into space, long-duration missions will require horticulture activities …
Project Research

Harmony in Precarity

By Po-Hao ChiHow could microgravity/hypergravity shape our perceptual experience of listening with weightlessness? How can we seek to explo…
Research
Community Biotechnology

Community Biotechnology
Project Research

Aguahoja

Programmable Water-Based Biocomposites for Digital Design and Fabrication across ScalesAguahoja is an exploration of nature’s design space.…
Archived
Project Research

Silk Pavilion II

What are radically sustainable methods for knitting, making and building in the age of the Anthropocene? How can humankind and members of o…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Vespers II

Novel technologies for additive manufacturing are enabling design and production at nature’s scale. We can seamlessly vary the physical pro…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Silk Pavilion

The Silk Pavilion explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication on product and architectural scales.The primary st…
Archived
Project Research

Beast

Beast is an organic-like entity created synthetically by the incorporation of physical parameters into digital form-generation protocols. A…
Archived
Project Research

Monocoque

French for "single shell," Monocoque stands for a construction technique that supports structural load using an object's external skin. Con…
Archived
Project Research

Raycounting

Raycounting is a method for generating customized light-shading constructions by registering the intensity and orientation of light rays wi…
Archived
Project Research

ELI: Electronic Life-detection Instrument

Life on Mars, if it exists, could have been transferred between Earth and Mars due to meteorite impacts. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial G…
Post Research

Sojourner 2020 | An international art payload to ISS

Nine groups of artists are selected to be on board Sojourner 2020, which will be launched into low Earth orbit for about 30 days.
Project Research

A tailored, electronic textile conformable suit for large-scale spatiotemporal physiological sensing in vivo

The rapid advancement of electronic devices and fabrication technologies has further promoted the field of wearables and smart textiles. Ho…
Article Research

Supercomputers help researchers speed drug discovery for Covid-19

An MIT research team is using supercomputers to help develop a drug to treat the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Article Research

Information Hazards

MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt discusses the biology of the pandemic and how gain-of-function research jeopardizes public safety.
Project Research

Targeted intracellular degradation of SARS-CoV-2 via computationally optimized peptide fusions

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has elicited a global health crisis of catastrophic proportions. With on…
Article Research

Experimental peptide targets Covid-19

Computational modeling yields a protein fragment that could bind to coronavirus spike proteins and destroy them.
Post Research

Andrea Ling's "Design by Decay, Decay by Design" receives STARTS Grand Prize at Ars Electronica '20

Andrea Ling, an alum of the Mediated Matter group, has won the Grand Prize in Artistic Exploration at this year's festival.
Article Research

Canadian architect wins €20,000 STARTS prize

Canadian architect and installation artist Andrea Ling has received the 2020 STARTS Grand Prize in the category of Artistic Exploration.
Archived
Research
Design Fiction

Sparking discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of emerging technologies through design and storytelling
Archived
Research
Synthetic Neurobiology

Revealing insights into the human condition and repairing brain disorders via novel tools for mapping and fixing brain computations
Archived
Project Research

Tools for mapping the molecular architecture and wiring of the brain

Complex biological systems such as brain circuits are extended 3-D structures made out of nanoscale building blocks such as proteins, RNAs,…
Archived
Project Research

Algorithmic Justice League

www.ajl.orgAn unseen force is rising—helping to determine who is hired, granted a loan, or even how long someone spends in prison. This for…
Article Research

Neri Oxman’s “Material Ecology” | Bio Art and Design

The exhibition has now become a part of the MoMA's ‘Virtual Views’ program due to the pandemic.
Project Research

Living Bits

Living Bits : Opportunities and Challenges for Integrating Living Microorganisms in Human-Computer InteractionThere are trillions of living…
Project Research

bioLogic—Science Advances

Cells’ biomechanical responses to external stimuli have been intensively studied but rarely implemented into devices that interact wit…
Archived
Article Research

This crazy sculpture is made by an MIT-engineered machine that 3D prints biopolymers to replace plastic

Aguahoja—a winner of Fast Company’s 2020 World Changing Ideas Awards—rethinks the paradigm of recycling.
Project Research

Designer molecular mops: Water-soluble cytokine receptors fused with Fc domain of IgG may be therapeutic for cytokine storms

In April 2019, Shuguang Zhang's lab started to use the QTY code to design a class of water-soluble cytokine receptors, including interferon…
Project Research

QTY code designs for water-soluble beta-barrel transmembrane proteins

In collaboration with Prof. Tao Fei’s lab (Shanghai Jiaotong University, China)In addition to a large number of membrane proteins that comp…
Project Research

QTY CXCR4 becomes more hydrophilic and retains cell signaling activity

In collaboration with Prof. Horst Vogel and Dr. Horst Pick (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland).G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are vital for …
Project Research

The QTY code: A simple tool for protein design

Structure and function studies of membrane proteins, particularly G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and multipass transmembrane proteins,…
Article Research

Proteins may halt the severe cytokine storms seen in Covid-19 patients

Team designs antibody-like receptor proteins that can bind to cytokines, as possible strategy for treating coronavirus and other infections.
Article Research

Gene drives could stop the world's oldest problems. Kevin Esvelt wants to make sure they don't start any.

Esvelt's career has gone from straight science into ethics and safety.
Article Research

If you care about the future of Earth, you must care about the human species

How biologist Kevin Esvelt came to know the planet, in his own words.
Post Research

Fluid Interfaces researchers and David Kong win Best Paper Award at Augmented Humans International Conference

Congratulations to Pat Pataranutaporn, Angela Vujic, David Kong, Pattie Maes, and Misha Sra!
Article Research

Neri Oxman grows tools for the future at new MoMA retrospective

“My team and I stand in the crossroads, challenging some of the processes that designers face at the intersection of biology and technology"
Project Research

Radiofungi: Biological Pigments for Radioprotection

A major concern for manned missions is space radiation. Ionizing radiation is known to pose both acute and chronic risks to many organisms,…
Article Research

Neri Oxman and Sir Norman Foster on the future of design

The venturesome Oxman talks experimental materials and lunar habitation with the renowned architect.
Article Research

The most futuristic building in New York—currently on view at MoMA—wasn’t made by humans

To build a new pavilion in midtown Manhattan, the architect Neri Oxman employed 17,000 silkworms.
Article Research

How emerging technologies can help us fight the new coronavirus

Sculpting Evolution head Kevin Esvelt shares how emerging technologies can help us fight the new coronavirus.
Archived
Project Research

Fukushima 2100

“[The wild boars] look at me like I am a visitor. It's like they’re the owners and I’m the guest. Wild animals that normally live in nature…
Archived
Project Research

Mice Against Ticks - Preventing tick-borne disease by permanently immunizing mice

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne infection in North America. People are infected when bitten by ticks; ticks are typically infe…
Project Research

The Telemetron

Today, the environments that humans occupy in space are designed for survival. Humans are carefully shuttled to and from space, and during …
Article Research

Could plants be the future of interface design?

Core77 reports on the Fluid Interfaces group’s work in cyborg botany.
Project Research

Elowan: A plant-robot hybrid

Elowan is a cybernetic lifeform, a plant in direct dialogue with a machine. Using its own internal electrical signals, the plant is interfa…
Article Research

Decay by design: These 3D-printed organic plastics naturally decompose

A group at MIT created polymers derived from organic matter, printed by a robot, and shaped by water.
Project Research

Cyborg Botany: Augmented plants as sensors, displays, and actuators

Plants can sense the environment, other living entities and regenerate, actuate or grow in response. Our interaction and communication…
Article Research

We can change the DNA of an entire species—in the wild

On Should This Exist?, Sculpting Evolution head Kevin Esvelt grapples with the potential benefits and consequences of gene drive.
Project Research

Studying the evolution of gene drive systems

How will gene drive systems evolve once released into the wild? Can they be reliably overwritten and blocked by immunizing reversal drives?…
Project Research

Daisy Drives

Who should decide whether, when, and how to alter the environment? These are hard questions, especially when the decisions will impact peop…
Article Research

The whiz kid building a better cyborg

Because old-school surgical amputation hasn’t kept up with modern-day medicine.
Article Research

Aguahoja—Programmable water-based biocomposites for digital design and fabrication

How the Mediated Matter group’s Aguahoja project transforms some of the most abundant materials on the planet into structural art.
Article Research

The data is in. Frogs don’t boil. But we might.

The metaphor of the frog in water that is heated slowly has long been used to describe the potential risk of climate change.
Article Research

Fighting Lyme disease with gene editing

Cummings School and MIT are working with Massachusetts citizens to deploy immune mice as frontline soldiers in the war against the disease.
Article Research

Uncharted worlds

Descending into the dark sea is like exploring deep space.
Post Research

Helping Physicians via Novel AI and Machine Learning Methods

Assisting physicians and patients by novel computational processes at the point-of-care.
Article Research

MIT "cyborg botany" researcher builds plant-robot hybrid called Elowan

Sareen is a research affiliate within the Fluid Interfaces group, and worked with lab founder Pattie Maes to develop the project.
Article Research

Part 1: Gene Drive; Part 2: Gene Drive and Local Drive

iBiology features two introductory classes from CRISPR expert Kevin Esvelt, head of the Media Lab's Sculpting Evolution group.
Article Research

This plant is a cyborg (and it might be the future of interfaces)

A Parsons and MIT researcher hooked up electrodes to a plant’s leaves to turn it into a robotic sensor.