Past Projects | innovationreactor

Fall 2016
	Low-Cost Solar Vapor Generators for Desalination and Related Markets	"A Multiplex, Nanosensor Platform for the Real-time Monitoring of Food and Waterborne Contaminants"

	Our proposed work would develop a portable, low-cost and rapidly deployable small-scale solution to treat seawater or any water of any quality, operating entirely off-grid using solar energy. An initial cost analysis suggests that our approach can achieve distributed desalination at a fraction of the production costs of state-of-the-art small-scale reverse osmosis and electrodialysis systems.	In this project, we propose to leverage new MIT technology to create a single low cost, portable, point of use platform for the measurement of bacterial pathogens and toxic metal ions. We ultimately propose a form factor for this platform as a single microscope slide printed with embedded fluorescent nanosensors into an array of hydrogel spots, each designed for a distinct analyte, and monitored with a smartphone or Raspberry Pi interface. The integration of these two classes of contaminants into a single platform will enable us to address virtually any set of contaminants of importance for food and water security.
	Reference Links: Nature Energy Paper	Reference Links: Research Group
	Prof. Gang Chen Department of Mechanical Engineering	Prof. Michael Strano and Prof. Anthony Sinskey Department of Chemical Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology

	Interactive Dynamic Video	Solar Thermal Aerogel Receiver (STAR)

	Interactive Dynamic Video (IDV) uses traditional cameras and algorithms looking at tiny, almost invisible vibrations of an object, to create video simulations that users can virtually interact with. This technique lets us capture the physical behavior of objects, without a 3D model, which gives us a way to play with them in virtual space. IDV can predict how objects might plausibly respond to unknown forces.	The Solar Thermal Aerogel Receiver (STAR) is a novel solar receiver designed to efficiently convert solar energy to heat, which can later be converted to electricity using a traditional heat engine (e.g., by running a Rankine cycle). The efficient solar to thermal conversion is accomplished using a transparent silica aerogel. This aerogel can be made extremely transparent in the solar spectrum while also being a thermal insulator. Some other applications we imagine this transparent aerogel being useful for include window insulation and solar hot water heaters
	Reference Links: MIT News Article, NBC News	Reference Links: Research Group
	Prof. Fredo Durand "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"	Prof. Gang Chen and Prof. Evelyn Wang Department of Mechanical Engineering

	StenAIR Surgical System	Tunable and Lightweight Sound Absorber

	Our objective is to provide the framework necessary to replace the current surgical approach for lumbar spinal stenosis, which requires significant muscle dissection, spinal bone removal, general anesthesia, and long recovery time, with an endoscopic outpatient procedure. The StenAIR Surgical System is a tool-set designed to access, navigate, and precisely ablate compressive tissue within the spinal canal via an existing hole at the base of the sacrum, thereby achieving spinal decompression with almost no trauma to nearby bone and back muscle, radically reducing the debilitation incurred by treatment.	Fang’s lab has invented method for using different soft matrices such as thin transparent films in order to create a tunable acoustic metamaterial for sound absorption. This soft metamaterial thin film ensures low frequency sound reduction which can be tuned to mitigate the particular frequency of noise being encountered. We seek input regarding potential needs and application of such materials.
	Reference Links: TLO Webpage	Reference Links: News Article, News Article
	Dr. Matt Johnson and Dr. Patrick Codd MIT Lincoln Laboratories and Duke University Hospital	Prof. Nick Fang Department of Mechanical Engineering

	Portable Technologies for Engineering Biologic and Cell Therapies	Detection of Foodborne Pathogens Using Dynamically Reconfigurable Liquid Colloid Particles (LCPs)

	The Solar Thermal Aerogel Receiver (STAR) is a novel solar receiver designed to efficiently convert solar energy to heat, which can later be converted to electricity using a traditional heat engine (e.g., by running a Rankine cycle). The efficient solar to thermal conversion is accomplished using a transparent silica aerogel. This aerogel can be made extremely transparent in the solar spectrum while also being a thermal insulator. Some other applications we imagine this transparent aerogel being useful for include window insulation and solar hot water heaters	Our laboratory is developing a biosensor that utilizes sensory LCPs to detect preselected pathogens, taking advantage of well-studied carbohydrate-pathogen binding interactions (bioreceptor) and detection by naked-eye or emissive-based optical readouts (transducer). The design is modular and we believe that we will be able to selectively detect a large number of bacterial, viral, and protozoan pathogens that commonly cause food poisoning.
	Reference Links: Nature Communications Paper	Reference Links: Nature Paper
	Prof. Timothy Lu and Prof. Rajeev Ram Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Department of Biological Engineering	Prof. Timothy Swager and Prof. Alexander Klibanov Department of Chemistry

	DebondTech

	Many applications make thin materials by attaching a membrane to a tape or other carrier system, performing manufacturing activities on that membrane (metallizing, grinding, dicing, polishing, etc.), and then releasing them onto another carrier or to stacking onto another membrane to create a finished product or “package”. Currently, manufacturing is limited by these membranes fracturing during release due to adhesion or surface tension forces. Debond’s carrier adhesive system provides strong handling while allowing a near stress-free release.

	Prof. Henry Smith Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Spring 2016
	NODE (Nanosatellite Optical Downlink Experiment)	Organometallic Palladium Reagents for Cysteine Bioconjugation

	Nanosatellite Optical Downlink Experiment (NODE) is a fast, secure, and easy-to-integrate miniature laser communications (lasercom) module for nanosatellites. We are also building and will deploy corresponding ground stations. Our technology improves current nanosatellite data downlink capabilities by more than 50 times (from 1 Mbps to 50 Mbps) with a straightforward path to scale to even higher rates.	The bioconjugation is fast and robust across a range of biocompatible reaction conditions. The straightforward synthesis of the palladium reagents from diverse and easily accessible precursors makes the method highly practical, providing access to a large structural space for protein modification. We have found that the resulting aryl bioconjugates are more stable towards acids, bases, oxidants, and external thiol nucleophiles than currently available bioconjugates linkers. We foresee this technology making an impact in industries such as biotherapeutics and biomaterials, and are currently exploring potential applications in these areas.
	Reference Links: Conference Paper, Research Group	Reference Links: Nature Paper, News Article
	Prof. Kerri Cahoy Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics	Prof. Stephen Buchwald and Prof. Bradley Pentelute Department of Chemistry

	Nanoporous Silicon for Applications in Energy and Water	Ubiety: Indoor positioning platform based on Wi-Fi

	Nanoporous silicon (NPSi) is a highly multifunctional material with a large number of current and potential applications including nanofiltration, thermoelectrics, lithium ion battery anodes, photovoltaics, and catalysis. Each of these applications stand to benefit from the integration of NPSi with decreased pore size, decreased inter-pore spacing, and increased pore aspect ratio. Yet, despite current advancements in nanofabrication technology, NPSi is nearing the limits of its accessible parameter space with regards to these three critical variables. We have developed an entirely solution-based, chemical etching process which has the ability to synthesize NPSi with sub-10nm pore diameters, sub-10nm inter-pore spacing, and pore aspect ratio of over 100:1	While GPS has revolutionized outdoor positioning, it does not work indoors. This project is developing an indoor positioning platform that is compatible with Wi-Fi enabled user devices (smartphones, tablets) and easily deployable. It would provide centimeter-scale location accuracy for users.
	Reference Links: Research Group	Reference Links: Research Paper
	Prof. Jeffrey Grossman Department of Material Science and Engineering	"Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science "

	Highly Aligned Polyethylene Composite Films for Thermal Management	Emerald: Motion Capture Indoors in Real-time

	While polymers are ubiquitous materials in modern society, low thermal conductivity values associated with bulk polymers have hindered widespread development of these materials in heat transfer applications. One such solution, molecular chain alignment by mechanical drawing, has been demonstrated to greatly improve thermal properties. For example, previous reports on drawn ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) nanofibers have demonstrated thermal conductivity values higher than that of most metals. High thermal conductivity in drawn fibers is attributed to polymer chain orientation along preferred direction by ultra-drawing, which improves the fiber quality toward an ‘ideal’ single crystalline fiber. We demonstrate a UHMWPE/graphite film with low filler loadings that is achieved via mechanical drawing-induced molecular chain alignment and filler orientation.	Emerald is based on patented and award-winning technology from MIT CSAIL called WiTrack©. Emerald tracks the 3D motion of a person from the radio signals reflected off her body. Similar to a Wi-Fi router, Emerald works even if the person is in a different room than the device. There’s no need for the individual to wear any sensor or modify their behavior in any way. Emerald exists in the background of the home.
	Reference Links: Nature Natotechnology Paper	Reference Links: Washington Post, Boston Globe, Gizmodo
	Prof. Gang Chen Department of Mechanical Engineering	Prof. Dina Katabi "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"

Fall 2015
	Nanoscale 3D Printing using Synthetic DNA	Video and Color Magnification

	Structural DNA nanotechnology currently faces a similar bottleneck in the broad participation of designers due to the need for automated CAD-based design software for these nano-objects. Here, development of a next-generation CAD framework is proposed to enable the fully automated design of structured DNA assemblies at the nanometer scale. As a starting point, the development of a CAD program is proposed here for the synthesis of a unique class of DNA-based objects called DNA nanocages. DNA nanocages can be programmed to adopt nearly arbitrary symmetries and sizes on this scale. Further, these DNA-based particles may be functionalized chemically with proteins, RNAs, chromophores, and other small molecules for diverse applications in biomolecular science and technology. In addition, these nanoscale materials can be transformed into structured inorganic materials including metals and silicon dioxide.	We have developed two new tools that we believe will be useful for scientists, doctors, and engineers: a motion microscope and a color microscope, allowing the visualization of small changes in color or of small motions. The processed video shows what the original video would have looked like if the motions were magnified by some amount, or if small color changes were amplified. It’s a tool like a microscope, but amplifying motions and color changes, instead of size.
	Reference Links: MIT News Report, Softpedia News	Reference Links: Project Webpage
	Prof. Mark Bathe Department of Biological Engineering	Prof. Fredo Durand and William Freeman "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"

	Clean Energy – Aluminum Fuel	Fastpass: A Centralized “Zero-Queue” Datacenter Network

	Aluminum has long been considered a promising potential energy source, it has high energy density and naturally reacts with water to release hydrogen and heat. However, in natural conditions the reaction is rapidly terminated due to oxidation of the aluminum. Our team developed a process to treat the Aluminum in a cost effective manner and allow the reaction to reach completion. By harnessing the thermal energy and hydrogen, we are able to produce clean, emissions free energy. The recyclable and non-toxic nature of the reaction products in addition to the abundance of Aluminum (8% of earth’s core) make Aluminum fuel an economically viable alternative energy source.	We have developed a new datacenter network architecture for use by enterprises and cloud computing operators. It provides network operators with a high degree of control over the timing of packets, and can be used to satisfy high-level application objectives, balancing between latency-sensitive interactive jobs, batch processing operations, and bulk data transfers. The key technical innovation in the system is a way to achieve high network utilization with very low (close to 0) queueing delays. This makes it possible to offer highly predictable and consistent performance, which is a significant problem in datacenter and enterprise networks today.
	Reference Links: Research Group	Reference Links: MIT News Report, Techworld
	Prof. Doug Hart Department of Mechanical Engineering	Prof. Hari Balakrishnan "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science "

	Waterproof & Smart Fabrics Using Symmetry-Breaking Surfaces	Transparency-Switching Materials for Reactive Sun Tracking

	The team’s recent innovation on using a combination of macro and microstructures to break symmetry of impacting drops has resulted in breaking the time-barrier of contact time of bouncing drops. Another of our innovation using deposition based grafted hydrophobic treatments has shown durability under aggressive environments and can conformally coat ultra-thin films from a range of new materials using scalable vapor-synthesis approach. Currently, the team is furthering the technology and combining these novel surface morphology and chemistry approaches and for fabrics applications. The approach offers significant flexibility and can be retrofitted with existing fabric manufacturing processes. In addition these macro features can be used as conduits for other multifunctional objectives to develop smart fabrics.	The primary aim of the project is the development and optimization of polymer-based composites exhibiting thermally-activated transparent-reflective switching. These materials are being developed with the primary intention of utilizing their unique optical properties to create a novel type of solar concentrator with the ability to reactively track the sun. This would make possible cost-effective concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) arrays for building integration and rooftop installation, which currently are inaccessible markets to CPV due to the sun-tracking requirement imposed on all concentrating systems.
	Reference Links: BBC News Article	Reference Links: Lab Publications
	Prof. Kripa Varanasi Department of Mechanical Engineering	Prof. Alfredo Alexander-Katz Department of Material Science and Engineering

	Hand-Held Ultrasonic Device for Rapid Localized Drug Delivery to the Gastrointestinal Tract

	Ultrasound is a longitudinal pressure wave with frequencies above the audible range (> 20 kHz). Clinically, ultrasound is applied in a variety of settings, including ultrasonography, tumor ablation, and lithotripsy, which mainly use high frequencies (> 1 MHz). At low frequencies (< 100 kHz), ultrasound has unique properties including the ability to transiently permeabilize and propel therapeutic substances into tissue by a phenomenon known as transient cavitation.
	Reference Links: Lemelson Award
	Prof. Robert Langer and Dr. Giovanni Traverso Department of Checmial Engineering and Massachusetts General Hospital

Spring 2015
	Applications of Plant Nanobionics	Broadband Angular Selective Material

	Is it possible to remove ambient lighting from the electrical grid and replace it with a natural, light emitting plant powered from its own ATP? What household electronic devices can be replaced with a comparably functioning, living plants and plant-based materials? Can we harness the natural processes of gas-liquid exchange in plants to detect chemical compounds in our environment? The realization of such “superpowered” plants is made possible by new engineering techniques developed recently in the Strano laboratory at MIT allowing nanoparticles to be infused to within the living plant vasculature, and also direct the localization of the particles in specific plant tissues and organelles	We have developed a material that allows light of any color to pass through only if it is coming from one specific angle; the technique reflects (or block) all light coming from other directions. The filter can be made less than 1/100 of a millimeter thick, and centimeters or even meters in size.
	Reference Links: Nature Methods, LA Times, MIT News	Reference Links: Science Paper, Discover Magazine, New Scientist
	Prof. Michael Strano Department of Chemical Engineering	Prof. Marin Soljacic Department of Physics

	A New Technology for Metal Extraction from Sulfides Ore	Engineering Smart Cell Therapies

	Our laboratory has developed proof of concept for copper extraction, and is currently evaluating the corresponding energy consumption. In parallel, the laboratory is currently investigating the possible use of this concept for minor metal containing sulfides ores, where the direct extraction of elements such as silver or molybdenum. Such approach would potentially make possible the extraction of minor metals from deposits or wastes that are currently considered uneconomical.	Synthetic biology offers the opportunity to engineer life. Living cells naturally sense and integrate signals to produce molecules in precise amounts and in defined contexts. Synthetic biologists reprogram cells with gene circuits so that cells can implement computations and record information. Our lab has invented a broad portfolio of synthetic gene circuits that conduct fundamental computational operations in living cells. These includes circuits that integrate Boolean logic with memory, circuits that count input pulses, analog gene circuits that enable cells to measure the concentration of molecules and implement addition and ratio metric calculations, and mixed-signal gene circuits that can implement band-pass filters and multi-bit analog-to-digital converters. These gene circuits enable the development of “smart” cells that are capable of sophisticated sense-and-respond behaviors for next-generation cellular therapies.
	Reference Links: Research Group	Reference Links: Scientist News Article
	Prof. Antoine Allanore Department of Materials Science and Engineering	Prof. Timothy Lu Departments of Biological Engineering & Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

	NeuroQWERTY	Low-Cost Rapid Algal Bloom Sensing Device

	Parkinson’s disease (PD), the second most frequent neurodegenerative disorder in the world, is clinically diagnosed many years after disease onset, when almost 50 per cent of dopaminergic neurons die. But subtle motor signs of PD, such as tremor and rigidity, are known to happen up to a decade before clinical diagnosis. neuroQWERTY’s algorithm identifies the motor signature of at-risk individuals by studying their finger interactions with laptops, mobile phones and tablets. neuroQWERTY can be used at home, allowing for high compliance and monitoring of longitudinal change.	Algal blooms in the Arabian Gulf present a major problem to the desalination plants in the UAE. Timely monitoring of algal blooms will aid the authorities in efficiently mitigating operational issues at the plants. In this project, we will use microphotonics to sense the onset of algal blooms by providing low-cost on-chip sensing devices which can provide a rapid assessment of the algal population. This will enable a low cost sensor network to provide continuous monitoring of algal blooms. Such devices are not currently available for developing a low?cost in?line continuous monitoring system.
	Reference Links: RLE News	Reference Links: PI Webpage
	Prof. Martha Gray Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology	Dr. Anuradha Agarwal Department of Materials Science and Engineering

	High Density Renewables Fuel	Two-Source Active Sensor System for 3D Vision

	We have developed a variety of renewable high density fuels that have applications for jet, diesel, missile, and UAV propulsion. These fuels can be produced in a sustainable fashion from waste biomass and have been designed to outperform both conventional renewable fuels as well as petroleum derived fuels. High density fuels have been prepared from cyclic molecules that can be extracted from pine resin or produced by microorganisms that convert sugars and waste biomass into hydrocarbons through a fermentation process. These fuels have energy densities up to 20% higher than conventional military jet fuels and have the potential to improve the performance of a variety of military platforms including jets, ground vehicles, missiles and UAV’s.	This technology provides a unique solution for the collection of imaging data and processing to provide 3D vision (3DVISION), the 3D shape and location of the scene imaged. LADAR sensors are another solution for three-dimensional imaging, but LADAR focal plane arrays are composed of pixels that are timing elements and typically these focal plane arrays have few pixels when compared to intensity measuring cameras, where multi-mega pixels is typical. These mega pixel focal plane arrays allow for the imaging of an entire frame of data in a very short period of time. This reduces the distortions that result when the sensor and/or the scene is moving and allows for tighter feedback and control that might be required in some application such as a robotics system or a vehicle landing system.

	Dr. Benjamin Harvey Naval Air Systems Command	Naval Air Systems Command

	Wide-Area Chemical Sensor (WACS)	Chimeria: A Social Categorization Engine

	The Wide-Area Chemical Sensor (WACS) measures concentrations of specified target gases in the atmosphere using a single, relatively broadband (~5 GHz) laser source. Deformations of the laser spectral beam are matched to targeted materials, enabling the detection and discrimination of gas clouds at very low concentrations (~1 part per trillion by volume) over tens of kilometers, while correcting for false alarms caused by atmospheric turbulence, variable atmospheric transmission, and other non-target gases.	Chimeria is one realization of Harrell’s approach to modeling how users’ identities change over time (patent pending; utility patent application #17614-6151). It is an approach to computing the social categories that users (avatars, characters, profiles, accounts, etc.) belong to and how those social categories change over time. It has been applied to varying conversation in videogames and to music recommendation on a social network site. Chimeria can be thought of as an engine for implementing identities (just as systems like Unity or the Unreal Engine are engines for implementing dynamic graphics).
		Reference Links: Research Paper, MIT News Article
	Dr. Jonathan Ashcom MIT Lincoln Laboratories	Prof. D. Fox Harrell "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"

	Maximum diversity construction system based on helices

	The invention embodies an educational toy, three dimensional, geometric puzzle and construction system comprising helical construction units that may be intertwined to form three dimensional structures. According to the present invention, the construction units may be assembled into structures including rigid icosahedral complexes configured in branched, ring, and dodecahedral arrays. The invention consists of a minimum inventory-maximum diversity construction system utilizing helices with unique dimensioning conferring upon them architectonic properties that allow them to be conjoined into objects that shed an educational light upon the so-called Platonic Solids, crystalline lattices and certain rules of geometry and that may have other utility as well.

	Dr. Ed Seldin Massachusetts General Hospital

Fall 2014
	"Cooling with Heat, Water and Sponges - Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs)."	Stable Carbapenes to Functionalize any Surface

	Operating on a vapor compression cycle, conventional air-conditioners use (1) electricity and (2) ozone-depleting chemicals, both of which lead to large energy consumption and high greenhouse gas emissions. To circumvent these shortcomings, we want to resurrect an obsolete type of air-conditioner that operates on a well-established, 150-year-old principle of vapor sorption-based cooling. These cooling systems run on (1) surplus heat instead of electricity, (2) use water as a refrigerant, and (3) without moving parts, operate silently. Their obsolescence in today’s markets, however, is due to their high cost and poor performance, attributes that can be addressed by transformative advances on the nature and capacity of the adsorbent material. Owing to their extraordinary porosity, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) can adsorb three times as much water as the best water adsorbents known previously.	A broad range of modern technologies, e.g., electronics, diagnostic systems, sensors, drug delivery agents, etc., rely on controlled, robust surface chemistries. It is therefore quite surprising that chemical methods for surface functionalization are relatively few in number. In fact, only a handful of basic bond-formation reactions: thiol-metal, silane-(metal oxide), phosphonate-(metal oxide), comprise the vast majority of surface functionalization strategy. As a result, new approaches to access functional monolayers could drastically augment current surface modification methods. Our project describes a new class of surfaces anchors called addressable N-heterocyclic carbenes (ANHCs). ANHCs offer a potentially ideal combination of strong surface bonding, synthetic versatility, and electrical conductivity that could make them the ideal platform for modern technologies that rely on molecular scale surface modification.
	Reference Links: News Article, MIT Tech Review	Reference Links: Research Paper, MIT News
	Prof. Mircea Dinca Department of Chemistry	Prof. Jeremiah Johnson Department of Chemistry

	Transparent Displays Enabled by Wavelength-Selective Light Scattering	Ergonomic Body Support for Laparoscopy

	Transparent displays can enable many useful applications, but they have not found widespread use due to limitations of existing technologies. We invented a new type of transparent display based on the wavelength-selective scattering of light from nanostructures. Monochromatic images are projected using a laser or LED projector onto a polymer film embedded with nano-particles that selectively scatter light at the projected wavelength. This approach has several advantages including high transparency, wide viewing-angle, low cost, scalable to large areas, compatible with existing commercial projectors, and ease of setting up and applying to glass surfaces.	Performing surgery in uncomfortable postures for hours at a time leads to musculoskeletal discomfort. Over 30% of practitioners indicate that discomfort influences choice of operative method (Plerhoples et al.). Evidence indicates significant rates of injury and higher risks for female surgeons. 97–100% of surgeons see ergonomic improvement in the OR as necessary (Matern et al., Wauben et al.).
	Reference Links: BBC News Article, RLE News
	Prof. Marin Soljacic Department of Physics	Dr. Nevan Clancy Hanumara Department of Mechanical Engineering

	High Efficiency Electrochemical CO2 Capture	Guaranteed Global Optimization of Thin Film Optical Systems with an Application to Designing a Broadband Omnidirectional

	Our laboratory has developed a (patent-pending) plug-and-play, energy-efficient, electrochemically-controlled process for CO2 capture. The technology utilizes an inexpensive redox-responsive material (i.e. a material that switches states with the application of an electric voltage) to modulate CO2 capture by a solvent. We have advanced the process from concept to working prototype, and are now ready for optimization and scale-up of the system and characterization of its long-term behavior.	Thin film optical coatings that modify reflection and transmission characteristics of lenses, solar cells, art glass and other optical components is a business that is projected to reach $10.2B/yr by 2016 [BCC Research]. But like many optical systems, the design of thin film optical interference coatings remains more art than science. The algorithms employed are heuristic and they cannot guarantee that their results are optimal. Here, we develop the first algorithm that can guarantee the global solution to an optical thin-film multilayer system design problem. We use this tool to design and experimentally demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge, the most efficient broadband omnidirectional antireflection coating for silicon solar cells.
	Reference Links: MIT Tech Review	Reference Links: Baldo Lab Research
	Prof. T. Alan Hatton Department of Chemical Engineering	Prof. Marc Baldo Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

	Digital Furniture Design and Fabrication Systems	High Precision Pumping Handheld Nanoliter Pipette

	Designing and fabricating custom furniture is currently time-consuming and expensive. We present a system that allows novice users to design custom, inexpensive furniture in a matter of minutes. The fabricated designs can be manufactured from off-the-shelf components and shipped to a user for self-assembly.	The handheld micropipette is a ubiquitous and essential device for liquid handling in the laboratory – approximately 1.5M pipettes and 10B pipette tips are sold annually, constituting a ~$0.8B industry with 5% annual growth. However, the standard micropipette design hasn’t changed in decades and has several well-known limitations, such as the inability to draw and dispense liquid volumes smaller than ~0.5µl. This poses a virtually universal “pain” for researchers and technicians performing work related to chemical synthesis, biochemistry, microfluidics, diagnostics, etc. Our group has invented and demonstrated a new mechanism that overcomes this limitation of commercial micropipettes.
	Reference Links: Youtube Demo	Reference Links: Patent
	Prof. Wojciech Matusik Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science	Prof. Anastassios John Hart Department of Mechanical Engineering

	“Big Data” algorithms for precision medicine and drug-target identification using metabolomics.

	We have developed a novel approach for analyzing untargeted metabolomic data that not only reduces the need for performing the additional tandem mass spectrometry experiments, but it can also integrate them with other high-throughput experimental data such sequencing and proteomic data. We have applied our algorithm to analyze metabolomic data of a cell line model of Huntington’s disease, a genetic neurodegenerative disorder. We further identified the mechanisms that link changes in metabolites to changes in phospho-proteins in the disease and validate our results experimentally. As a result, using our approach we have identified novel proteins altered in the disease, which can be considered for therapeutics.
	Reference Links: Youtube Talk
	Prof. Ernest Fraenkel Department of Biological Engineering Hospital