China Venture Workshop announces first cohort

Ten MIT startups have been selected for the inaugural cohort of the China Venture Workshop, jointly sponsored by the MIT China Future City Lab’s (CFC) China Future City Innovation Connector (FCIC) and DesignX, the School of Architecture and Planning’s accelerator for innovation in the built environment. The startups, with goals ranging from clean energy to job creation, aim to launch ventures in China to solve problems associated with urbanization.

The FCIC prepares teams of innovators to tackle the problems of urbanization by working with those active in the Chinese urban development industry. The program pairs teams from MIT with academic advisors at Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Science, and with leading industry and civic actors, to guide them through a local pilot launch process. The program also provides essential business skills and insights for operating in China, including how to work closely with the government and how to engage customers.

“If we want to solve the challenges of cities in China, as well as around the world, we need innovative companies to deploy solutions on the ground,” says Siqi Zheng, faculty director of the China Future City Lab. Zheng is an urban and environmental economist whose research focuses on Chinese cities.

“China, however, is a hard market to penetrate,” she says. “We offer teams the knowledge, connections, and support to launch successfully in China. The CFC Lab is developing a systematic approach to identifying urban challenges in Chinese cities that are local to each city but that also share some characteristics, and then design procedures to better match the technological and social innovations with those challenges.”

The workshop is a two-week intensive summer program led by faculty and staff from CFC, DesignX, and Tsinghua University, where the program will partly take place. It will introduce entrepreneurial teams to potential investors, resources, and experts in their fields as they turn their ideas and inventions into tangible ventures. The startups will also travel to other Chinese cities that are leaders in innovation to identify potential pilot locations and meet with local leaders and innovators.

“China presents unique opportunities for innovation in design, cities, and the built environment,” says Professor Dennis Frenchman, faculty director of DesignX, who has worked in China for more than 30 years. “We find that cities are willing to experiment with new technologies and patterns of development that will improve urban livability.”

On May 21 the teams met with over 30 of the CFC’s Chinese industrial partners to demonstrate their progress and solicit feedback before they embark on the piloting trip.

“The fact that FCIC teams will have the opportunity to work with influential real estate conglomerates, city governments, and academic researchers in Greater China will provide a significant advantage to these ambitious urban innovation startups,” said CFC’s executive director, Zhengzhen Tan, who designed and developed the FCIC program in cooperation with DesignX and Tsinghua University.

According to Tan, the workshop received 25 applications that featured a wide variety of creative and innovative ideas. FCIC, DesignX, and industry partners evaluated written applications, listened to pitches, and conducted interviews to choose the teams.

Gilad Rosenzweig, executive director of DesignX, has been working with dozens of startups that are making an impact in cities. “This opportunity to engage in modern Chinese city making is unique,” says Rosenzweig. “DesignX was created to help design and deploy ideas and technology to improve design, cities, and the human experience. Partnering with the CFC Lab and Tsinghua University will support exponential growth for everyone involved.”

These are the startups:

AdaViv uses artificial intelligence to help indoor agriculture companies monitor their crops and make adjustments to growing conditions to optimize results. AdaViv’s founders are particularly interested in China’s expanding herbal medicine market.

Biobot Analytics deploys robotic sensors in urban sewer systems to help governments collect and evaluate real-time public health data, such as the prevalence of opioids and other drugs. They have completed experiments in the U.S., Kuwait, and South Korea.

CitoryTech allows individuals to familiarize themselves with their community by employing innovative data to lead residents on outings to explore their cities.

Constructure matches various construction industry participants to increase transparency between employers and their potential employees.

Gaia Elements is developing a kite-powered system to generate energy from wind. They are seeking to expand this innovative technology in China, the world’s largest clean energy market.

Kawsay connects infrastructure providers with people living in informal communities and provides data analysis and tools to help the providers manage business growth, explore new markets, and track impact. Their first project was improving water delivery in Lima, Peru, and the team is now working to expand their data collection and forecasting in larger markets.

Multimer collects, visualizes, and analyzes geolocated data transmitted by wearable technology to inform human-centered spatial design and decisions. They have previously partnered with the United Nations, Harley-Davidson, and IBM to help the organizations understand how their users, employees, and customers utilize a space.

Roots Studio digitizes the creative content of traditional artists from remote areas around the world and connects them to the $32-billion global art, interior decor, and design licensing markets.

Shurong Data provides behavior chain analysis using advanced data collection technologies to initiate and aid smarter real estate development and urban planning.

VThree.AI uses artificial intelligence to empower smart buildings and smart urban life, focusing initially on the problem of energy waste in cities by monitoring and identifying “top waster” devices and rooms in buildings.

In addition, the MIT teams will be joined in China by six startups associated with Tsinghua University:

Air Faucet System replaces water used during hand-washing with high-speed air flow, achieving the same cleanliness while cutting water use by 90 percent.

Galloon extracts and treats moisture from the air, turning it into safe drinking water. They are developing technology for use by both individuals and cities.

LeanFM Technologies employs artificial intelligence to monitor the status of household and office devices and predict impending mechanical failure.

Linktravel collects and analyzes commuter data to provide consumers with schedules and help transportation companies improve their efficiency.

Sponge Public Restgardens uses sponge technology to absorb rainwater for use in public restrooms and nearby artificial ponds, creating both efficient bathrooms and urban beauty.

Zhongyan Parking increases the efficiency of underground parking by building vertical shafts that can accommodate ten times as many cars as a typical parking lot of the same size.

Zheng, who also serves as the Samuel Tak Lee Associate Professor of Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship, says that she is optimistic about the positive change that the combination of visionary startups and knowledgeable partners will bring about.

“This program has the potential to help combat the issues of urbanization in China in an innovative and creative manner that could improve people’s urban living experiences,” Zheng says. “Even in only our first year, we think the program is going to have an immediate impact.”

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Fighting toxic stress in children is tough but possible

Through compelling personal stories and dramatic research evidence, speakers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory’s recent “Early Life Stress and Mental Health” symposium showed that people are making progress in helping children survive toxic stress through science and activism.

Whether in the lab, the clinic, or the community, the key is to ask deep questions and to invest the time and energy to grapple with the heartbreaking, multifaceted complexity underlying how adverse experiences such as neglect or abuse can affect the health of children. It can lead to strikingly higher likelihoods of mental illness and reduced lifespan.

“We do everything that we can to help primarily low-income children and parents,” JPB Foundation President Barbara Picower said at the May 9 event. The foundation supports many of the event’s speakers and collaborated with the Institute to organize the daylong conference, a biennial event at MIT since 2012. “Toxic stress is something that is so damaging to children, the results of it occur through the lifetime.”

MIT Provost Martin Schmidt added: “The topic of this symposium could not be more important for our society, morally or practically.”

Speakers reinforced Picower and Schmidt’s introduction with an abundance of data. New Jersey children traumatized by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, even if their homes suffered only minor damage, were five times more likely to be depressed and to report feelings of nervousness and fear years later, reported Patricia Findley, an associate professor of social work at Rutgers University.

Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician and founder of the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco, presented data from a major review study and other sources showing that experiencing four or more adverse childhood events (ACEs) is associated with an 5.6-fold risk of drug abuse, an 11 times increased risk of Alzheimer’s and a 30-times greater risk of suicide. In all, ACEs can reduce longevity by decades.

Digging deeper

Though such associations are well known, Burke Harris said, few pediatricians screen for ACEs. And failing to discover those underlying problems can lead to misguided treatment.

Many behavioral problems associated with toxic stress, for example, come across as ADHD but are caused by the chronically elevated inflammatory, or human “fight-or-flight,” response that originally evolved for surviving dangers like encountering a bear in the forest, but that stressed children live with constantly, she said. “The problem is what happens when that bear comes home every night,” she said.

Without screening for that underlying stress, doctors often prescribe ritalin, a stimulant. But in a child enduring a chronic stress response, that medication likely won’t do much good. Instead, if screening reveals ACEs, Burke Harris works to mitigate the stresses and prescribes guanfacine, which calms the nervous system and reduces blood pressure.

Keynote speaker Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, told a similar anecdote about the need to dig deeper. Years ago, a social worker in HCZ’s after-school program alerted him to a child who began to display bizarre behaviors such as talking to himself. Rather than just sending the child to a doctor, Canada sent the social worker to visit the home. The visit revealed that the tiny apartment was infested with rats and the child’s mother, who needed to work, had tasked the boy with guarding his younger sisters from being bitten at night. The boy’s problem was not mental illness so much as a profound lack of sleep.

“If you aren’t willing to take the time to actually figure out what’s happened to a child you might treat the child for something that isn’t really causing that kid to be sick,” Canada said. “You have to really take the time to understand.”

The desire to dig deeper brought Ravi Raju to the lab of Picower Institute Director Li-Huei Tsai, where he is a Picower Clinical Fellow. After observing stark health and income disparities among Boston children during his pediatrics residency at local hospitals, Raju decided to do fundamental research on how deprivation amid poverty affects the brain. Using an experimental protocol in which mice are deprived of nesting materials, an important component of pup rearing, Raju has shown that baby mice appear to adapt via specific changes in gene expression. Those that do remain resilient. Those that don’t become very anxious. Studying those genes and the molecular pathways they affect when expressed is revealing potential therapeutic targets for mitigating toxic stress, he said.

In India, MIT economics professor Frank Schilbach is testing interventions to help alleviate poverty cycles. His research shows how intricately problems in households are intertwined. Among poor workers, for instance, back-breaking labor leads to debilitating pain. With poor health care, many laborers start drinking alcohol to feel better. Difficulties at home, including for their children, often follow. Amid this cycle, he’s found, is poor sleep, an often underappreciated factor where interventions could help.

Babies show amazing acumen in what they pick up from the adults around them, said MIT cognitive scientist Laura Schulz, professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She described her research demonstrating that babies will match the degree of effort they observe a grown-up making when trying to figure a task out. Another set of experiments shows how adult can constrain a child’s thinking. If an adult specifically demonstrates only one feature of a multi-featured toy, for example, a child won’t explore the toy to discover any of its other features.

Speaking up

As important as speakers said it is for scientists, physicians, and social workers to engage in deep, energetic efforts to understand the underlying cognitive abilities and vulnerabilities of children, several other speakers emphasized how crucial it is for afflicted communities and people to insist on being heard.

Mona Hanna-Attisha, associate professor of pediatrics at Michigan State University, spoke at the symposium about the extensive research she did to prove the horrible extent of lead poisoning among children in Flint, Michigan, after the city infamously switched its water supply a few years ago. Community complaints about foul water were dismissed. Research documented how wrong that was.

“They were told the water was fine,” she said. “Science is not meant to live in publications and journals and ivory towers. The purpose of science is to benefit our communities.”

After she revealed the problem, social and health services have increased in the city, but now the fight continues to sustain funding for those restorative efforts, said Hanna-Attisha, who won an MIT Media Lab “Disobedience Award.”

Though pollution is an abundant problem, other speakers described how the environment can protect against toxic stress. Marc Berman, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, described his findings that exposure to trees and natural scenes may improve cognition. Meanwhile Jonathan F.P. Rose, a prominent builder of progressive mixed-income communities, described how his developments incorporate vegetation, as well as medical and social services rather than just providing housing.

But several speakers made it clear that they’ve had to advocate and sometimes fight systems to mitigate toxic stress in their communities. On a panel with Frank Farrow of the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Boston University pediatrician Renee Boynton-Jarrett, local parents Lisa Melara and Gihan Suliman spoke of their tireless volunteer work to help parents find supportive community resources and understand their rights. Later in the day, journalist and filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas, CEO of Define American, described his work in creating communities among undocumented immigrants such as himself, to help fight hatred by ensuring their stories are told.

Several speakers pulled few punches about how ongoing problems of poverty, violence, substance abuse and racism continue to produce toxic stress in children, even as they also reported their strides in research and community action to mitigate its effects.

Harvard University professor and child health expert Jack Shonkoff noted that for all the advances in research and community services, their impact has not been nearly enough.

Shonkoff put it in terms of the “Stockdale Paradox,” named for a former U.S. prisoner of war in Vietnam. To survive, goes the paradox, one must never lose hope of ultimately prevailing, even while remaining brutally honest about how dire the current situation really is.

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Three MIT graduate students awarded Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Invention

MIT graduate students Tyler Clites, Maher Damak, and Guy Satat are among 14 collegiate inventors awarded the 2018 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which recognizes young inventors who have designed and built prototypes in the fields of health care, transportation and mobility, food/water and agriculture, and consumer devices.  

The Lemelson-MIT Program awarded a total of $80,000 in prizes this year to six groups of undergraduate and graduate students nationwide. Winners were chosen based on the overall inventiveness of their work, the invention’s potential for commercialization or adoption, and youth mentorship experience.

“This year’s Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winners are the embodiment of the inventive spirit,” said Stephanie Couch, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. “They have not only invented solutions to real-world problems, they are also paving the way for their peers through their mentorship. We’re excited to share their accomplishments and to continue seeing them grow as Lemelson-MIT winners.”

Tyler Clites — “Cure it!” Lemelson-MIT Student Prize

Tyler Clites is a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology and is part of the Biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab. He developed a new approach to amputation called the Agonist-antagonist Myoneural Interface (AMI), which comprises a novel surgical technique for limb amputation and a complementary prosthetic control system. The AMI provides patients with proprioception, or the sense of the relative positioning of their prosthetic body parts in space. AMI was designed to allow people with amputations to receive feedback of joint position, speed, and torque from their brain-controlled prosthetic limb, improving their ability to perform everyday tasks and enabling them to feel as though their prosthesis is truly a part of their body.

Clites’s passion for teaching and mentorship has become a large part of his life. He has served as the head teaching assistant for Human 2.0, a lecture series and project course at the MIT Media Lab that explores cutting-edge research in the space of human augmentation. Clites also serves as a guest lecturer for various undergraduate courses at MIT and Harvard, and mentors undergraduate researchers at MIT and surrounding schools.

Clites plans to continue inventing throughout his career. His long-term professional goals are to become a professor and a researcher, invent imminently-translatable clinical solutions and establish a research environment where inventiveness

Mahar Damak — “Eat it!” Lemelson-MIT Student Prize

Maher Damak, a PhD student in the Varanasi Research Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, developed a polymer additive for agricultural sprays so that pesticides stick to the plants instead of bouncing off. Currently, when farmers spray their fields with pesticides, only 2 percent of the spray sticks to the plants. The majority of the pesticides bounce off the plants and seep into the soil, ground water, and surface water, contaminating the environment. Damak’s invention is both biocompatible and biodegradable.

Recognizing the need for a support network of peers from his home country, Damak founded Tunisia@MIT to strengthen the cultural bonds of the Tunisian community. He also works with high school students in Tunisia who are considering applying to U.S. colleges and has served as an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program mentor to undergraduate students at MIT.

Damak is passionate about the water-food-energy nexus. After graduating, he plans to pursue an entrepreneurial path to bring his inventions to market. He has already co-founded a company, Infinite Cooling, which will commercialize another invention of his, a water recovery process intended to bring greater efficiency to the way that power plants use water.

Guy Satat, “Drive it!” Lemelson-MIT Student Prize

Guy Satat, a PhD student in the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab, developed All Photons Imaging, a system that captures clear images through dense fog for improved driving conditions. All Photons Imaging leverages the different light paths created by fog to reconstruct images as if the fog were not there, using a pulsed laser and an ultrafast Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) camera.

Satat is dedicated to mentoring undergraduate and master’s students at MIT. His most rewarding mentorship experiences as a graduate student were three trips to Mumbai, India, funded by his MIT Tata Center fellowship, where he led small groups of undergraduate students on several health-tech related projects. On his entrepreneurial path to commercialization, Satat recently filed a provisional patent application for All Photons Imaging.

Clites, Damak and Satat each received $15,000 for their inventive work. More information about them and all of this year’s collegiate prize winners are available on the Lemelson-MIT website. 

The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is open to teams of undergraduates and individual graduate students from any college or university in the United States who have inventions in categories that represent significant sectors of the economy: health care, transportation and mobility, food/water and agriculture, and consumer devices. Students interested in applying for the 2019 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize can find more information on the Lemelson-MIT website.

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Neuroscientists discover roles of gene linked to Alzheimer’s

People with a gene variant called APOE4 have a higher risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease: APOE4 is three times more common among Alzheimer’s patients than it is among the general population. However, little is known about why this version of the APOE gene, which is normally involved in metabolism and transport of fatty molecules such as cholesterol, confers higher risk for Alzheimer’s.

To shed light on this question, MIT neuroscientists have performed a comprehensive study of APOE4 and the more common form of the gene, APOE3. Studying brain cells derived from a type of induced human stem cells, the researchers found that APOE4 promotes the accumulation of the beta amyloid proteins that cause the characteristic plaques seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. 

“APOE4 influences every cell type that we studied, to facilitate the development of Alzheimer’s pathology, especially amyloid accumulation,” says Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the senior author of the study.

The researchers also found that they could eliminate the signs of Alzheimer’s in brain cells with APOE4 by editing the gene to turn it into the APOE3 variant.

Picower Institute Research Scientist Yuan-Ta Lin and former postdoc Jinsoo Seo are the lead authors of the paper, which appears in the May 31 online edition of Neuron.

A microglia-like cell grown from human cells expressing the APOE4 protein. (Courtesy of the researchers)

Amyloid accumulation

APOE, also called apolipoprotein E, comes in three variants, known as 2, 3, and 4. APOE binds to cholesterol and lipids in cells’ environments, enabling the cells to absorb the lipids. In the brain, cells known as astrocytes produce lipids, which are then secreted and taken up by neurons with the help of APOE.

Among the general population, about 8 percent of people have APOE2, 78 percent have APOE3, and 14 percent have APOE4. However, among people with late onset, nonfamilial Alzheimer’s, which accounts for 95 percent of all cases, the profile is very different: Only 4 percent have APOE2, and the percentage with APOE3 drops to 60 percent. APOE4 shows a dramatic increase: Thirty-seven percent of late-onset Alzheimer’s patients carry this version of the gene.

“APOE4 is by far the most significant risk gene for late-onset, sporadic Alzheimer’s disease,” Tsai says. “However, despite that, there really has not been a whole lot of research done on it. We still don’t have a very good idea of why APOE4 increases the disease risk.”

Previous studies have shown that people with the APOE4 gene have higher levels of amyloid proteins, but little is known about why that is.

In this study, the MIT team set out to answer that question using human induced pluripotent stem cells — stem cells derived from skin or other cell types. They were able to stimulate those stem cells to differentiate into three different types of brain cells: neurons, astrocytes, and microglia.

Using the gene-editing system CRISPR/Cas9, the researchers genetically converted APOE3 in stem cells derived from a healthy subject to APOE4. Because the cells were genetically identical except for the APOE gene, any differences seen between them could be attributed to that gene.

In neurons, the researchers found that cells expressing APOE3 and APOE4 differed in the expression of hundreds of genes — about 250 genes went down and 190 went up in cells with APOE4. In astrocytes, the numbers were even higher, and they were highest of all in microglia: In APOE4 microglia, more than 1,100 genes showed reduced activity, while 300 became more active.

These genetic changes also translated to differences in cell behavior. Neurons with APOE4 formed more synapses, and they secreted higher levels of amyloid protein.

In APOE4 astrocytes, the researchers found that cholesterol metabolism was highly dysregulated. The cells produced twice as much cholesterol as APOE3 astrocytes, and their ability to remove amyloid proteins from their surroundings was dramatically impaired.

Microglia were similarly affected. These cells, whose normal function is to help remove foreign matter, including amyloid proteins and pathogens such as bacteria, became much slower at this task when they had the APOE4 gene.

The researchers also found that they could reverse most of these effects by using CRISPR/Cas9 to convert the APOE4 gene to APOE3 in brain cells derived from induced stem cells from a patient with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Disrupting cell behavior

In another experiment, the researchers created three-dimensional “organoids,” or miniature brains, from cells with genes that are known to cause early-onset Alzheimer’s. These organoids had high levels of amyloid aggregates, but when they were exposed to APOE3 microglia, most of the aggregates were cleared away. In contrast, APOE4 microglia did not efficiently clear the aggregates.

Tsai said she believes that APOE4 may disrupt specific signaling pathways within brain cells, leading to the changes in behavior that the researchers saw in this study.

“From this gene expression profiling, we can narrow down to certain signaling pathways that are dysregulated by APOE4,” she says. “I think that this definitely can reveal potential targets for therapeutic intervention.”

In this 3D brain “organoid,” microglia-like cells, labeled in red, fail to properly clear amyloid proteins (green) from the brain tissue. (Courtesy of the researchers)

The findings also suggest that if gene-editing technology could be made to work in humans, which many biotechnology companies are now trying to achieve, it could offer a way to treat Alzheimer’s patients who carry the APOE4 gene.

“If you can convert the gene from E4 to E3, a lot of the Alzheimer’s associated characteristics can be diminished,” Tsai says.

The research was funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea, the National Institutes of Health, the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the Robert A. and Renee E. Belfer Family Foundation, and Cure Alzheimer’s Fund.

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GAIN program to connect community college students to career opportunities

Regional employers are coping with too few qualified candidates for materials science-related jobs, MIT assistant professor of materials science and engineering Rafael Jaramillo says, but many community college students are unaware of the opportunities available to them. Jaramillo hopes to grow the pool of materials scientists one student at a time.

This June, Jaramillo’s lab is rolling out the Guided Academic Industry Network (GAIN) program, which will offer at least one intern for each of the next five summers a chance to conduct research in his lab, coupled with the possibility to intern at a local company the following summer.

Five Massachusetts companies have agreed to participate by interviewing the GAIN interns and possibly offering them a summer research internship. They are 1366 in Bedford, Ambri in Cambridge and Marlborough, Saint-Gobain in Northboro, Veloxint in Framingham, and Xtalic in Marlborough. “These companies were rather specifically selected for reliance on traditional materials science skills and materials processing skills,” Jaramillo says. All are within commuting distance of Boston.

“They will only take interns by mutual agreement. The company and the student have to be a match, but they’ve agreed in principle to reserve internship slots,” Jaramillo says. Both the research lab and company internships will last eight weeks.

Currently, Jaramillo says, the GAIN program is funded through his National Science Foundation CAREER award to host one new student per summer. He hopes to expand the program in the future through industrial sponsorship or renewed government funding.

Qualified candidates in materials science are needed for jobs at a variety of companies in ceramics, adhesives and coatings, lubricants, and electronic materials, Jaramillo says.

Demand for materials scientists is expected to grow nationally by 7.1 percent over the decade ending in 2026, according to U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment projections. Materials engineers are expected to grow at a slower rate, 1.6 percent. For May 2017, the BLS estimated the number of materials scientists working in Boston at 140 and in Massachusetts at 440, with a larger number working as materials engineers, 320 in Boston and 650 in the state overall.

GAIN will target participants from Bunker Hill Community College and Roxbury Community College. The first student intern will be Bruce Quinn from Roxbury Community College. Interns will gain an introduction to materials science and hands-on experience with materials processing at MIT.

GAIN interns will tie in to the MIT Materials Research Laboratory’s National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center community college internship and Summer Scholars programs, giving them the opportunity to attend weekly luncheon meetings covering topics such as crafting a high-quality poster presentation, applying to graduate school, understanding patents and trademarks, and pursuing careers in materials science and other engineering fields.

Over the past two summers, Jaramillo hosted two students in his lab, Hlee Yang from Roxbury Community College, and Noon Farsab from Bunker Hill Community College. Neither was familiar with materials science before being introduced to the Jaramillo lab. “I would say that it’s their level of willingness to try new things and the success that they had in my group was one factor that led to this program being started,” Jaramillo says. “They’ve done good work. Our research moves forward a little bit faster than if they weren’t here.”

The impact of outreach to community college students is multifaceted. “As an educator, it feels really good to see the students succeed. These are students who we don’t get to interact with very often, and it’s been a real pleasure to see them learn something completely new and find success, so there is a satisfaction that comes from that,” he says. The summer internships also are a service to materials science. “When you see the opportunity that these students present, and you see the need that the industry that we serve has, and you see an opportunity to help, it’s great that I have the opportunity to do it,” Jaramillo says.

Jaramillo’s interns will work on developing new electronic materials from special compounds known as complex chalcogenides. “The types of work they’ll be doing in my lab, which is bulk materials processing and phase identification, those are skills that will be directly useful for those companies,” he says. The students will produce new semiconductors using bulk techniques, such as mixing powders and synthesizing solid-state materials in quartz ampoules. “They get their hands on some fun equipment, they get to do some machining, they get to learn X-ray diffraction, so really essential materials characterization techniques,” Jaramillo explains.

GAIN program participants must follow up their summer lab experience by presenting their MIT summer research results to fellow students back at their own campuses and similarly must also give a presentation after their second summer industry internship. Along the way they’ll be coached in soft skills such as resume and interview preparation.

There is no requirement that participants get a job or further their education in materials science. But, Jaramillo says, “We’ve gotten to expose the student to the field of materials, we’ve gotten to identify a potential new pipeline of employees for local companies, and I’ve gotten some great research done over the summer.”

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Surgical technique improves sensation, control of prosthetic limb

Humans can accurately sense the position, speed, and torque of their limbs, even with their eyes shut. This sense, known as proprioception, allows humans to precisely control their body movements.

Despite significant improvements to prosthetic devices in recent years, researchers have been unable to provide this essential sensation to people with artificial limbs, limiting their ability to accurately control their movements.

Researchers at the Center for Extreme Bionics at the MIT Media Lab have invented a new neural interface and communication paradigm that is able to send movement commands from the central nervous system to a robotic prosthesis, and relay proprioceptive feedback describing movement of the joint back to the central nervous system in return.

This new paradigm, known as the agonist-antagonist myoneural interface, involves a novel surgical approach to limb amputation in which dynamic muscle relationships are preserved within the amputated limb. The AMI was validated in extensive preclinical experimentation at MIT prior to its first surgical implementation in a human patient at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital.

In a paper published today in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers describe the first human implementation of the agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI), in a person with below-knee amputation.

The paper represents the first time information on joint position, speed, and torque has been fed from a prosthetic limb into the nervous system, according to senior author and project director Hugh Herr, a professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab.

“Our goal is to close the loop between the peripheral nervous system’s muscles and nerves, and the bionic appendage,” says Herr.

To do this, the researchers used the same biological sensors that create the body’s natural proprioceptive sensations.

The AMI consists of two opposing muscle-tendons, known as an agonist and an antagonist, which are surgically connected in series so that when one muscle contracts and shortens — upon either volitional or electrical activation — the other stretches, and vice versa.

This coupled movement enables natural biological sensors within the muscle-tendon to transmit electrical signals to the central nervous system, communicating muscle length, speed, and force information, which is interpreted by the brain as natural joint proprioception. 

This is how muscle-tendon proprioception works naturally in human joints, Herr says.

“Because the muscles have a natural nerve supply, when this agonist-antagonist muscle movement occurs information is sent through the nerve to the brain, enabling the person to feel those muscles moving, both their position, speed, and load,” he says.

By connecting the AMI with electrodes, the researchers can detect electrical pulses from the muscle, or apply electricity to the muscle to cause it to contract.

“When a person is thinking about moving their phantom ankle, the AMI that maps to that bionic ankle is moving back and forth, sending signals through the nerves to the brain, enabling the person with an amputation to actually feel their bionic ankle moving throughout the whole angular range,” Herr says.

Decoding the electrical language of proprioception within nerves is extremely difficult, according to Tyler Clites, first author of the paper and graduate student lead on the project.

“Using this approach, rather than needing to speak that electrical language ourselves, we use these biological sensors to speak the language for us,” Clites says. “These sensors translate mechanical stretch into electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain as sensations of position, speed, and force.”

The AMI was first implemented surgically in a human patient at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, Boston, by Matthew Carty, one of the paper’s authors, a surgeon in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and an MIT research scientist.

In this operation, two AMIs were constructed in the residual limb at the time of primary below-knee amputation, with one AMI to control the prosthetic ankle joint, and the other to control the prosthetic subtalar joint.

“We knew that in order for us to validate the success of this new approach to amputation, we would need to couple the procedure with a novel prosthesis that could take advantage of the additional capabilities of this new type of residual limb,” Carty says. “Collaboration was critical, as the design of the procedure informed the design of the robotic limb, and vice versa.”

Toward this end, an advanced prosthetic limb was built at MIT and electrically linked to the patient’s peripheral nervous system using electrodes placed over each AMI muscle following the amputation surgery.

The researchers then compared the movement of the AMI patient with that of four people who had undergone a traditional below-knee amputation procedure, using the same advanced prosthetic limb.

They found that the AMI patient had more stable control over movement of the prosthetic device and was able to move more efficiently than those with the conventional amputation. They also found that the AMI patient quickly displayed natural, reflexive behaviors such as extending the toes toward the next step when walking down a set of stairs.

These behaviors are essential to natural human movement and were absent in all of the people who had undergone a traditional amputation.

What’s more, while the patients with conventional amputation reported feeling disconnected to the prosthesis, the AMI patient quickly described feeling that the bionic ankle and foot had become a part of their own body.

“This is pretty significant evidence that the brain and the spinal cord in this patient adopted the prosthetic leg as if it were their biological limb, enabling those biological pathways to become active once again,” Clites says. “We believe proprioception is fundamental to that adoption.”

It is difficult for an individual with a lower limb amputation to gain a sense of embodiment with their artificial limb, according to Daniel Ferris, the Robert W. Adenbaum Professor of Engineering Innovation at the University of Florida, who was not involved in the research.

“This is ground breaking. The increased sense of embodiment by the amputee subject is a powerful result of having better control of and feedback from the bionic limb,” Ferris says. “I expect that we will see individuals with traumatic amputations start to seek out this type of surgery and interface for their prostheses — it could provide a much greater quality of life for amputees.”

The researchers have since carried out the AMI procedure on nine other below-knee amputees and are planning to adapt the technique for those needing above-knee, below-elbow, and above-elbow amputations.

“Previously, humans have used technology in a tool-like fashion,” Herr says. “We are now starting to see a new era of human-device interaction, of full neurological embodiment, in which what we design becomes truly part of us, part of our identity.”

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Featured video: Engineering joy

MIT senior Isabel “Izzy” Lloyd will graduate this spring with not only a degree in mechanical engineering, but with the pleasure of knowing she accomplished a goal she set for herself as a freshman: to impact those around her in a truly positive way.

Lloyd has worn many hats during her MIT career — from captivating audiences with her a cappella group The Chorallaries, to helping Parkinson’s patients with a device that helps manage tremors, to spreading a simple message of compassion and kindness by spearheading the TMYAD (“Tell Me About Your Day”) campaign. To Lloyd, the MIT experience is as rich in its human interactions and encounters as it is in discoveries in the realms of engineering and technology.

“No question, you come here, you’re going to have great times, you’re going to have bad times,” she says. “But through it all, this community’s got you. And if you don’t believe that, I’m sitting here, right now telling you that I’ve got you… It’s going to be OK.”

Submitted by: Carolyn Blais | Video by: Lillie Paquette | 4 min, 58 sec

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A new full-tuition graduate scholarship for women in supply chain management

The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics has announced a new scholarship in partnership with AWESOME (Achieving Women’s Excellence in Supply chain Operations, Management and Education), an industry-wide organization for senior-level women in the supply chain field. The agreement was announced at the annual AWESOME Symposium on Thursday, May 10. The AWESOME/MIT Advancing Women through Education (AWE) Scholarship aims to attract women who want to pursue graduate degrees in supply chain management at MIT. 

Specifically, the AWESOME/MIT AWE Scholarship will offer an applicant to the MIT Supply Chain Management Program a fully paid tuition fellowship for the first year — this equates to approximately a $72,000 value for a student of the class of 2020. Potential students wishing to be considered for this award will announce their candidacy in their applications along with a one-paragraph essay. MIT will review all applications and forward the top three finalists to AWESOME to select one recipient from the pool of candidates. 

“Women who graduate from our master's program here at MIT go on to become senior leaders in enterprises across the globe,” says Bruce Arntzen, executive director of the MIT Supply Chain Management Program. “We are proud to offer this scholarship in partnership with AWESOME, and encourage more women to consider a career path in supply chain management,” he added.

“One of AWESOME’s priorities is to encourage women to prepare for and perform successfully in supply chain leadership roles,” says Heather Sheehan, executive director of AWESOME. “We are excited about this opportunity to work with one of the top graduate-level supply chain programs to expand educational opportunities and have a positive impact on the future of supply chain leadership,” she added.

Application collection will begin in September, and the first AWE Scholarship will be awarded in March 2019. The recipient will attend the AWESOME Symposium in either May 2019 or May 2020. Beginning in August 2019 the first AWE Scholarship winner will attend MIT.

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Spirn, Oxman win Cooper Hewitt design awards

Two School of Architecture and Planning professors are among 10 honorees for the 2018 National Design Awards from Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum. The awards recognize excellence, innovation, and public impact in design across multiple categories.

Professor Anne Whiston Spirn of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning received the Design Mind award. Neri Oxman, associate professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab, was recognized with the Interaction Design award.

“We are thrilled to have two faculty members represented in the 2018 National Design Awards,” said Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. “That the recognition is for two innovators in different departments and at different stages of their careers is a testament to the overall depth of our faculty’s expertise and to the breadth of their influence and innovation in the field of design.”

Spirn’s Design Mind award recognizes innovation and visionary individuals who have had a profound impact on design theory, practice, and public awareness. The Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Spirn is an author, landscape architect, and photographer. Her first book, “The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design” (Basic Books, 1984) is listed as one of the 100 most influential and important books in the 20th century by the American Planning Association and credited with launching the ecological urbanism movement.

“We could not be more proud of Anne and the National Design Award’s recognition of her level of influence in integrating urban and natural environments, not only for designers and planners, but for the general public,” said Eran Ben-Joseph, head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. “Anne’s work has been transformative for how we all see, act, and value our surroundings, which is a profound contribution to design theory and practice.”

Oxman’s expertise in the design of interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services was recognized with the Interaction Design award. The Sony Corporation Career Development Professor, Oxman is the founder of the Mediated Matter research group, which combines design rooted in the natural world with science and technological innovation. The integration of computationally derived form and biological inspired fabrication is known as the field of material ecology — a term and field pioneered by Oxman.

“All 10 of this year’s winners present a powerful design perspective and body of work that is at once inclusive and deeply personal, accompanied by great achievement, humanity and social impact,” Cooper Hewitt Director Caroline Baumann said in a prepared statement.

The other award winners included: Gail Anderson for Lifetime Achievement, Design for America for Corporate and Institutional Achievement, WEISS/MANFREDI for Architecture Design, Civilization for Communication Design, Christina Kim for Fashion Design, Oppenheim Architecture + Design for Interior Design, Mikyoung Kim Design for Landscape Architecture, and Blu Dot for Product Design.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is one of 19 museums that comprise the Smithsonian Institution and the only museum in the United States dedicated to historical and contemporary design. Founded in 1896, Cooper Hewitt began the National Design Award in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council. The annual awards celebrate design as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world and seek to increase national awareness of the impact of design.

A gala to celebrate the winners will be held at the Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden at Cooper Hewitt in New York City on Oct. 18.

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Chien Wang selected to join French climate research initiative

Chien Wang, senior research scientist with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, is one of six U.S.-based scientists selected this month to participate in French President Emmanuel Macron's "Make our Planet Great Again" program, an initiative aimed at boosting the international science community’s efforts to combat climate change. Chosen by an international panel of experts, the six new U.S-based scientists and eight others from around the world will join the program’s first 18 invitees, bringing the total number of participants to 32. 

Launched in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s June 2017 announcement of his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, and subsequently coordinated with a similar effort in Germany, the initiative provides up to 1.5 million euros (about $1.8 million) over three to five years for non-resident researchers to develop, along with French partners, high-level research projects in France that are aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Projects will focus on advancing the world’s understanding of Earth system science, addressing sustainable development challenges and supporting the transition from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy sources. The six new U.S.-based grant recipients — who hail from Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University, Florida State University, MIT, the University of Montana, and Yale University — will explore topics ranging from global ocean circulation to biodiversity.

The objective of Wang’s project, “Enhancing the Understanding of the Roles of Aerosols in Climate and Environment (EUROACE),” is to advance knowledge about the critical, yet still poorly understood, issue of how aerosol-cloud interactions impact the climate, and to develop new methods to more precisely represent key physical processes involved in these interactions in Earth system models.

Produced by power plant emissions, vehicle exhaust, biomass burning, and other human activities, as well by natural processes such as volcanic eruptions, airborne particulates, and aerosols have far-reaching effects on the Earth system.

“Aerosols are critical components of the atmosphere that can reduce incoming solar radiation — and hence lower global surface temperatures — either directly by reflecting it skyward or indirectly by increasing the reflectivity of clouds,” says Wang, an expert on aerosol-cloud interactions who is also affiliated with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and the Center for Global Change Science. “Aerosols are also a major source of particulate pollution. A better understanding of the roles of aerosols in the climate and environment could provide decision-makers with more precise tools to monitor and mitigate climate change and air pollution.”

Aerosol-cloud interactions are among the greatest sources of uncertainty in today’s climate model projections. To get a better handle on these interactions and their impacts on the global climate and environment, Wang will study their effects on precipitation (both locally and over great distances), cloud cover, and phase changes, and other critical atmospheric phenomena. He will also seek to determine the sensitivity of these effects to aerosol size, chemical composition, and atmospheric concentration — quantities that vary depending on the emissions source.

To obtain this knowledge, Wang will employ regional-to-global-scale modeling with detailed physical and chemical processes alongside observational data and advanced data science tools such as deep machine learning algorithms.

Starting this year, he will pursue this research in close collaboration with colleagues at two hosting research institutions in the city of Toulouse: the Laboratoire d’Aérologie of the Joint Research Unit of the National Research Council, and Paul Sabatier University.

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Engineers design color-changing compression bandage

Compression therapy is a standard form of treatment for patients who suffer from venous ulcers and other conditions in which veins struggle to return blood from the lower extremities. Compression stockings and bandages, wrapped tightly around the affected limb, can help to stimulate blood flow. But there is currently no clear way to gauge whether a bandage is applying an optimal pressure for a given condition.

Now engineers at MIT have developed pressure-sensing photonic fibers that they have woven into a typical compression bandage. As the bandage is stretched, the fibers change color. Using a color chart, a caregiver can stretch a bandage until it matches the color for a desired pressure, before, say, wrapping it around a patient’s leg.

The photonic fibers can then serve as a continuous pressure sensor — if their color changes, caregivers or patients can use the color chart to determine whether and to what degree the bandage needs loosening or tightening.

“Getting the pressure right is critical in treating many medical conditions including venous ulcers, which affect several hundred thousand patients in the U.S. each year,” says Mathias Kolle, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “These fibers can provide information about the pressure that the bandage exerts. We can design them so that for a specific desired pressure, the fibers reflect an easily distinguished color.”

Kolle and his colleagues have published their results in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials. Co-authors from MIT include first author Joseph Sandt, Marie Moudio, and Christian Argenti, along with J. Kenji Clark of the Univeristy of Tokyo, James Hardin of the United States Air Force Research Laboratory, Matthew Carty of Brigham and Women’s Hospital-Harvard Medical School, and Jennifer Lewis of Harvard University.

Natural inspiration

The color of the photonic fibers arises not from any intrinsic pigmentation, but from their carefully designed structural configuration. Each fiber is about 10 times the diameter of a human hair. The researchers fabricated the fiber from ultrathin layers of transparent rubber materials, which they rolled up to create a jelly-roll-type structure. Each layer within the roll is only a few hundred nanometers thick.

In this rolled-up configuration, light reflects off each interface between individual layers. With enough layers of consistent thickness, these reflections interact to strengthen some colors in the visible spectrum, for instance red, while diminishing the brightness of other colors. This makes the fiber appear a certain color, depending on the thickness of the layers within the fiber.

“Structural color is really neat, because you can get brighter, stronger colors than with inks or dyes just by using particular arrangements of transparent materials,” Sandt says. “These colors persist as long as the structure is maintained.”

The fibers’ design relies upon an optical phenomenon known as “interference,” in which light, reflected from a periodic stack of thin, transparent layers, can produce vibrant colors that depend on the stack’s geometric parameters and material composition. Optical interference is what produces colorful swirls in oily puddles and soap bubbles. It’s also what gives peacocks and butterflies their dazzling, shifting shades, as their feathers and wings are made from similarly periodic structures.

“My interest has always been in taking interesting structural elements that lie at the origin of nature’s most dazzling light manipulation strategies, to try recreating and employing them in useful applications,” Kolle says.

A multilayered approach

The team’s approach combines known optical design concepts with soft materials, to create dynamic photonic materials.

While a postdoc at Harvard in the group of Professor Joanna Aizenberg, Kolle was inspired by the work of Pete Vukusic, professor of biophotonics at the University of Exeter in the U.K., on Margaritaria nobilis, a tropical plant that produces extremely shiny blue berries. The fruits’ skin is made up of cells with a periodic cellulose structure, through which light can reflect to give the fruit its signature metallic blue color.

Together, Kolle and Vukusic sought ways to translate the fruit’s photonic architecture into a useful synthetic material. Ultimately, they fashioned multilayered fibers from stretchable materials, and assumed that stretching the fibers would change the individual layers’ thicknesses, enabling them to tune the fibers’ color. The results of these first efforts were published in Advanced Materials in 2013.

When Kolle joined the MIT faculty in the same year, he and his group, including Sandt, improved on the photonic fiber’s design and fabrication. In their current form, the fibers are made from layers of commonly used and widely available transparent rubbers, wrapped around highly stretchable fiber cores. Sandt fabricated each layer using spin-coating, a technique in which a rubber, dissolved into solution, is poured onto a spinning wheel. Excess material is flung off the wheel, leaving a thin, uniform coating, the thickness of which can be determined by the wheel’s speed.

For fiber fabrication, Sandt formed these two layers on top of a water-soluble film on a silicon wafer. He then submerged the wafer, with all three layers, in water to dissolve the water-soluble layer, leaving the two rubbery layers floating on the water’s surface. Finally, he carefully rolled the two transparent layers around a black rubber fiber, to produce the final colorful photonic fiber.­­

Reflecting pressure

The team can tune the thickness of the fibers’ layers to produce any desired color tuning, using standard optical modeling approaches customized for their fiber design.

“If you want a fiber to go from yellow to green, or blue, we can say, ‘This is how we have to lay out the fiber to give us this kind of [color] trajectory,’” Kolle says. “This is powerful because you might want to have something that reflects red to show a dangerously high strain, or green for ‘ok.’ We have that capacity.”

The team fabricated color-changing fibers with a tailored, strain-dependent color variation using the theoretical model, and then stitched them along the length of a conventional compression bandage, which they previously characterized to determine the pressure that the bandage generates when it’s stretched by a certain amount.

The team used the relationship between bandage stretch and pressure, and the correlation between fiber color and strain, to draw up a color chart, matching a fiber’s color (produced by a certain amount of stretching) to the pressure that is generated by the bandage.

To test the bandage’s effectiveness, Sandt and Moudio enlisted over a dozen student volunteers, who worked in pairs to apply three different compression bandages to each other’s legs: a plain bandage, a bandage threaded with photonic fibers, and a commercially-available bandage printed with rectangular patterns. This bandage is designed so that when it is applying an optimal pressure, users should see that the rectangles become squares.

Overall, the bandage woven with photonic fibers gave the clearest pressure feedback. Students were able to interpret the color of the fibers, and based on the color chart, apply a corresponding optimal pressure more accurately than either of the other bandages.

The researchers are now looking for ways to scale up the fiber fabrication process. Currently, they are able to make fibers that are several inches long. Ideally, they would like to produce meters or even kilometers of such fibers at a time.

“Currently, the fibers are costly, mostly because of the labor that goes into making them,” Kolle says. “The materials themselves are not worth much. If we could reel out kilometers of these fibers with relatively little work, then they would be dirt cheap.”

Then, such fibers could be threaded into bandages, along with textiles such as athletic apparel and shoes as color indicators for, say, muscle strain during workouts. Kolle envisions that they may also be used as remotely readable strain gauges for infrastructure and machinery.

“Of course, they could also be a scientific tool that could be used in a broader context, which we want to explore,” Kolle says.

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and by the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.

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Jason Martins named 2018 Gates Cambridge Scholar

Jason Martins, currently pursuing his master’s degree in chemical engineering practice (MSCEP), has been awarded this year’s competitive Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

Martins will attend Cambridge University to earn a master's of philosophy in energy technologies. He plans to work on electrochemical energy storage technologies capable of meeting new demands with integrating renewables into the current energy generation mix. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, he says he will seek to apply his research to creating a sustainable world for future generations.

“Scuba diving through reefs affected by coral bleaching in Southeast Asia, I witnessed the downstream consequences of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere,” says Martins. “In between my undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Toronto, my work experiences in the wastewater, metallurgical, and nuclear energy industries introduced me to problems dealing with the environmental effects of energy production and consumption.” A fourth-year undergraduate project with industry advisers from NASA also exposed him to the possibility of transforming carbon emissions from waste product to valuable resource.

While at MIT, Martins became involved with the MIT Energy Club, and was the director of finance for the MIT Energy Conference, the largest student-run energy conference in the U.S. Attracting over 500 attendees each year, the conference facilitates discussion and exploration into enabling technologies for the future of clean energy, energy digitization, and existing energy infrastructure. “This opportunity to become involved in the broader MIT energy community has further solidified my passion for electrochemical energy storage,” explains Martins.

This summer, as part of his MSCEP program, Martins will attend two industrial stations of the Department of Chemical Engineering’s Practice School, where students work in teams to help solve real-world problems around the world. For the month of June, Martins will be heading to work at Saint-Gobain’s research and development center in Northboro, Massachusetts. Later in the summer, he will be stationed at the MedImmune headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland. In the fall he will begin his master’s studies at Cambridge.

“Being a part of Course 10’s MSCEP program allowed me to develop skills and ideas that I will carry with me through my future path in academia and industry,” he says. “I look forward to building upon these skills in Practice School and during my master’s thesis at Cambridge.”

Established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, the Gates Cambridge Scholarship provides full funding for talented students from outside the United Kingdom to pursue postgraduate study in any subject at Cambridge University. Since the program’s inception in 2001, there have been 28 Gates Cambridge Scholars from MIT.

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MIT-Tufts collaboration aims to advance translational research

A new collaboration between MIT and Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) aims to accelerate device development for clinical studies.

The T.5 Capacity in Medical Devices Program, co-led by Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) Director Elazer R. Edelman, will focus on the early yet critical stage of translational science, when a medical device or diagnostic tool is still in its prototype stage.

Translational research is typically categorized in four stages, from T1 to T4 (translation from the laboratory to population-wide impacts on health); in the “T.5” program, MIT and Tufts CTSI will focus on using clinical insights to fine-tune early device testing and design sequences of promising ideas to make them more likely to become successful medical applications.

The work will be supported through a 2018 Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) recently issued by the National Institutes of Health to Tufts CTSI and its collaborators. Of the $56 million in federal funding, MIT will receive $4 million in support of the T.5 program, which will be carried out through the IMES Clinical Research Center.

“We use the term 'T.5' to highlight the bidirectional, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral nature of preclinical R&D, and the role that testing and optimization in this phase has on outcomes at T1 and beyond. The new partnership with Tufts CTSI enables MIT to provide unique resources and perspectives in shifting the focus from translation — simply moving ideas from one space to another, to transformation — emboldening ideas and accelerating and de-risking the challenging process of R&D,” says Edelman, who is also the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Health Sciences at MIT, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a coronary care unit cardiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “We are excited to explore this collaboration with Tufts CTSI and its partners in transforming nascent ideas into clinical impact.”

Since 2008, Tufts CTSI has been a member of the National Institutes of Health’s CTSA Consortium, a national network of medical research institutions that work together to improve the translational research process to get more treatments to more patients more quickly, collaborating locally and regionally to catalyze innovation in training, research tools, and processes.

“Traditionally T1, or ‘bench-to-bedside,’ is seen as the first phase of translational research, but the work that occurs before T1 is critical” says Harry P. Selker, dean and principal investigator of Tufts CTSI. “I am delighted to join forces with MIT to support research teams at this early, pre-T1 translational stage, T.5, to efficiently turn device concepts into testable prototypes, and effectively incorporate clinical insights into the full span of preliminary R&D.”

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Turning up the heat on thermoelectrics

Imagine being able to power your car partly from the heat that its engine gives off. Or what if you could get a portion of your home’s electricity from the heat that a power plant emits? Such energy-efficient scenarios may one day be possible with improvements in thermoelectric materials — which spontaneously produce electricity when one side of the material is heated.

Over the last 60 years or so, scientists have studied a number of materials to characterize their thermoelectric potential, or the efficiency with which they convert heat to power. But to date, most of these materials have yielded efficiencies that are too low for any widespread practical use.

MIT physicists have now found a way to significantly boost thermoelectricity’s potential, with a theoretical method that they report today in Science Advances. The material they model with this method is five times more efficient, and could potentially generate twice the amount of energy, as the best thermoelectric materials that exist today.

“If everything works out to our wildest dreams, then suddenly, a lot of things that right now are too inefficient to do will become more efficient,” says lead author Brian Skinner, a postdoc in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. “You might see in people’s cars little thermoelectric recoverers that take that waste heat your car engine is putting off, and use it to recharge the battery. Or these devices may be put around power plants so that heat that was formerly wasted by your nuclear reactor or coal power plant now gets recovered and put into the electric grid.”

Skinner’s co-author on the paper is Liang Fu, the Sarah W. Biedenharn Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at MIT.

Finding holes in a theory

A material’s ability to produce energy from heat is based on the behavior of its electrons in the presence of a temperature difference. When one side of a thermoelectric material is heated, it can energize electrons to leap away from the hot side and accumulate on the cold side. The resulting buildup of electrons can create a measurable voltage.

Materials that have so far been explored have generated very little thermoelectric power, in part because electrons are relatively difficult to thermally energize. In most materials, electrons exist in specific bands, or energy ranges. Each band is separated by a gap — a small range of energies in which electrons cannot exist. Energizing electrons enough to cross a band gap and physically migrate across a material has been extremely challenging.

Skinner and Fu decided to look at the thermoelectric potential of a family of materials known as topological semimetals. In contrast to most other solid materials such as semiconductors and insulators, topological semimetals are unique in that they have zero band gaps — an energy configuration that enables electrons to easily jump to higher energy bands when heated.

Scientists had assumed that topological semimetals, a relatively new type of material that is largely synthesized in the lab, would not generate much thermoelectric power. When the material is heated on one side, electrons are energized, and do accumulate on the other end. But as these negatively charged electrons jump to higher energy bands, they leave behind what’s known as “holes” — particles of positive charge that also pile up on the material’s cold side, canceling out the electrons’ effect and producing very little energy in the end.

But the team wasn’t quite ready to discount this material. In an unrelated bit of research, Skinner had noticed a curious effect in semiconductors that are exposed to a strong magnetic field. Under such conditions, the magnetic field can affect the motion of electrons, bending their trajectory. Skinner and Fu wondered: What kind of effect might a magnetic field have in topological semimetals?

They consulted the literature and found that a team from Princeton University, in attempting to fully characterize a type of topological material known as lead tin selenide, had also measured its thermoelectric properties under a magnetic field in 2013. Among their many observations of the material, the researchers had reported seeing an increase in thermoelectric generation, under a very high magnetic field of 35 tesla (most MRI machines, for comparison, operate around 2 to 3 tesla).

Skinner and Fu used properties of the material from the Princeton study to theoretically model the material’s thermoelectric performance under a range of temperature and magnetic field conditions.

“We eventually figured out that under a strong magnetic field, a funny thing happens, where you could make electrons and holes move in opposite directions,” Skinner says. “Electrons go toward the cold side, and holes toward the hot side. They work together and, in principle, you could get a bigger and bigger voltage out of the same material just by making the magnetic field stronger.”

Tesla power

In their theoretical modeling, the group calculated lead tin selenide’s ZT, or figure of merit, a quantity that tells you how close your material is to the theoretical limit for generating power from heat. The most efficient materials that have been reported so far have a ZT of about 2. Skinner and Fu found that, under a strong magnetic field of about 30 tesla, lead tin selenide can have a ZT of about 10 — five times more efficient than the best-performing thermoelectrics.

“It’s way off scale,” Skinner says. “When we first stumbled on this idea, it seemed a little too dramatic. It took a few days to convince myself that it all adds up.”

They calculate that a material with a ZT equal to 10, if heated at room temperature to about 500 kelvins, or 440 degrees Fahrenheit, under a 30-tesla magnetic field, should be able to turn 18 percent of that heat to electricity, compared to materials with a ZT equal to 2, which would only be able to convert 8 percent of that heat to energy.

The group acknowledges that, to achieve such high efficiencies, currently available topological semimetals would have to be heated under an extremely high magnetic field that could only be produced by a handful of facilities in the world. For these materials to be practical for use in power plants or automobiles, they should operate in the range of 1 to 2 tesla.

Fu says this should be doable if a topological semimetal were extremely clean, meaning that there are very few impurities in the material that would get in the way of electrons’ flow.

“To make materials very clean is very challenging, but people have dedicated a lot of effort to high-quality growth of these materials,” Fu says.

He adds that lead tin selenide, the material they focused on in their study, is not the cleanest topological semimetal that scientists have synthesized. In other words, there may be other, cleaner materials that may generate the same amount of thermal power with a much smaller magnetic field.

“We can see that this material is a good thermoelectric material, but there should be better ones,” Fu says. “One approach is to take the best [topological semimetal] we have now, and apply a magnetic field of 3 tesla. It may not increase efficiency by a factor of 2, but maybe 20 or 50 percent, which is already a pretty big advance.”

The team has filed a patent for their new thermolelectric approach and is collaborating with Princeton researchers to experimentally test the theory.

The research is supported by the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center of U.S. Department of Energy, and by Office of Basic Energy Sciences of U.S. Department of Energy.

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Work of the future and the future of work for women in political science

After a 30-year career focused on the economic institutions of wealthy democracies, Kathleen Thelen, the Ford Professor of Political Science, has recently begun carving out time from her globe-hopping schedule to pursue compelling opportunities closer to home.

“At a certain point in your career, you feel that part of what you want to do is give back,” says Thelen, who is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds a permanent appointment at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and honorary degrees from three European universities.

As the 2017-18 president of the 12,000-member American Political Science Association (APSA), Thelen is spearheading an effort to understand and address the challenges to career advancement faced by women with doctorates in political science.

Thelen will also be a key player in MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future, an Institute-wide venture launched in February to explore the impacts of technology on jobs. “The task force will be putting the interaction of technology and society at the forefront,” she says. “This connects directly with my research to understand how new technologies and forms of work organization can be steered in ways that balance generating economic efficiencies with providing some level of social solidarity and equality.”

Striking a balance

Since graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, Thelen has been concerned with the ways rich democracies strike such a balance. She is particularly preoccupied by whether wealthy nations act to cushion skilled and unskilled labor from economic shocks tied to recession or technological change.

Her approach to these topics involves comparing the economic institutions, markets, and policies of different nations. In one notable example, Thelen traced different systems of vocational education and training in the U.S., Britain, Germany, and Japan over 100 years. Her richly detailed analysis, which resulted in the award-winning book, “How Institutions Evolve” (2005), yielded some unexpected findings.

In Germany she discovered “a surprising continuity in core vocational training institutions despite convulsive ruptures in high politics,” she says. Through two world wars, a depression, and the advent of mass manufacturing, Germany committed to high level education and training for a large population not bound for college. These students, she says, “go on to high quality apprenticeships and high prestige jobs with Lufthansa, BMW, or Mercedes.”

In contrast, Thelen says, “the U.S. allowed the whole vocational training track to erode, and to become stigmatized.” During the 20th century, educational orthodoxy and related policy promoted the idea that only a college education yielded high paying employment. But not all students found college attainable, leaving many lacking well-paid work, especially as manufacturing and other industry jobs migrated overseas. Today, says Thelen, “Employers often have a hard time recruiting skilled labor and must look elsewhere.”

The new normal

One of Thelen’s current concerns is the issue of precarity — defined as exposure to social risks and financial insecurity. Precarity is the new normal for millions of employees in the new “gig economy,” as large, networked firms worldwide “abdicate any responsibility for contractual wages, hours, and benefits,” says Thelen. “People are in a position of self-provisioning.”

In a recent paper, Thelen investigates Uber and the impacts of its business model in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden, documenting the very different regulatory responses and outcomes across the three countries. Uber represents a model, she believes, that is swiftly becoming a defining feature of 21st century capitalism. 

She also takes aim at Amazon, “a hugely powerful company that is one of the worst employers in the U.S.,” she says. “For people who work at fulfillment centers, it is brutal and pretty precarious employment.”  

Amazon’s impact, like that of other largescale employers that rely heavily on atypical work contracts, tends to prove vastly more negative in the U.S. than in other wealthy democracies, adds Thelen. That’s because in America, benefits like health care, sick pay, vacation time, and retirement tend to be attached to employment, whereas other countries guarantee them as rights to citizens. And labor unions and organizing are deeply constrained by prevailing labor laws in this country compared to other democracies, so whether in home health care, public service, or the retail sector, workers receive lower pay and fewer benefits.

“The more I write about precarity, the more I’m drawn to thinking about policy and potential interventions,” says Thelen. As a member of MIT’s Future of Work taskforce, Thelen will be researching measures other nations deploy to reduce precarity for a “fluid army of contingent workers.” She will spotlight this issue in her keynote address this summer at the APSA annual conference.

Thelen is also using her APSA presidency to address a different kind of employment issue: “For the past 10 years close to 50 percent of all newly minted PhDs in political science were women, but you’d never know that looking at the websites of top political science departments and top journals in the field,” says Thelen. “This has motivated me to figure out what is going on.”

With the help of a National Science Foundation grant, she has launched an APSA task force to research “where the bottlenecks and chokepoints are, and ways to make sure women have the full range of career options open to them.” Just as a previous generation of women pioneered the way for her, Thelen hopes to serve the coming cohort — frequently in person. She mentors female political scientists at MIT and beyond, and opens her home to meetings to discuss ways to make MIT’s own department more attentive to potential obstacles to their career growth.

“I’ve had a lot of good breaks, and love my work,” says Thelen. “I want to do anything I can to help a younger generation make their way in the profession.”

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Irving London, founding director of Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, dies at 99

Irving M. London, founding director of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and an expert in the molecular regulation of hemoglobin synthesis, died on May 23 at age 99. 

The HST community had recently celebrated London’s life and accomplishments on the occasion of his approaching 100 birthday. London expressed great pleasure in the festivities, held on May 7.

London was born in Malden, Massachusetts, on July 24, 1918. He graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor of arts degree, summa cum laude, in 1939; he simultaneously earned a second bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew College in Roxbury, Massachusetts. London weighed attending law school versus medical school after graduation, eventually accepting an offer from Harvard Medical School (HMS). His tenure at HMS instilled in him a love of research that spanned the rest of his career.

After graduation, London accepted an internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. His training was interrupted by World War II, where he served as a captain in the Medical Corps. He was also part of a research effort that showed the efficacy of chloroquine as an anti-malarial drug. At the end of his military service, he was assigned to Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific to serve as the physician for the Congressional delegation to the atom bomb tests.

London returned to New York to resume his residency after the war. Following residency, he took up a research fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He soon joined the faculty and embarked on a rich research, teaching, and clinical tenure at Columbia. In 1954, London became the founding chair of the Department of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He served as professor and chair of the department, and directed medical services at the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center until 1970.

In 1968 London was invited to serve as a consultant to MIT and Harvard Medical School to assist in the planning of a new program joining the two institutions. He then devoted a sabbatical year to carrying out the initial program development, including garnering the support of the faculties of both MIT and HMS. In 1970, he accepted the directorship of this new entity, the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. HST represents London’s commitment to the integration of medical education and university education, and integration of interdisciplinary biomedical research, education and medical practice. London, who was professor of medicine at HMS and professor of biology at MIT, served as the director of HST until 1985.

London received numerous awards and honors over the years for his groundbreaking work explaining the molecular regulation of hemoglobin synthesis at the level of gene transcription and translation into protein. The honors include: a Welch Fellowship in Internal Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences from 1949-1952, the Theobald Smith Award in Medical Sciences of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1953, the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship at Institut Pasteur from 1962-1963, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, charter membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1970, and elected membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1971. From 1982 to 2003, he served first on the board of directors and then on the Biosciences Advisory Committee of the pharmaceutical company Johnson and Johnson.

Looking back over his career, London derived great satisfaction from having played a key role in the founding of three institutions known for their contributions to medical research, practice, and education: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and HST. His passion for HST never abated. As late as fall 2017, he continued to teach and co-direct HST.140 (Molecular Medicine), a course that he developed with Paul Gallop in 1979. London was present for most of HST’s major events, including the HST Forum, HST dinner seminars, and HST graduation. There he shared his intellect, wit, and warmth with the students, faculty, alumni, and staff of HST.

London was preceded in death by his wife, Huguette. He is survived by his sons, Robb and David, as well as Robb’s children Jacob and Danielle.

London was looking forward to HST’s 50th anniversary in 2020. His pioneering work in creating a unique physician/scientist/engineer training program is his enduring legacy, and positions HST well for the next 50 years.

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Solutions to great chemical science challenges

Professors Elizabeth M. Nolan and Jeremiah Johnson shared their efforts to address some of the greatest challenges currently faced by the chemical sciences at a recent Alumni and Friends reception hosted by the Department of Chemistry and the School of Science. Invited guests gathered in the Samberg Conference Center on May 16 for an evening of food, drink, and stimulating talks.

Employing metal withholding to inhibit microbial colonization

Nolan’s research addresses the chemistry and biology of human innate immunity and microbial pathogenesis. The lab employs toolkits of biological chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and microbiology to decipher the interplay between human host-defense molecules and microbes, and to evaluate new strategies for treating and preventing microbial infections. A significant portion of the research program is focused on metals and immunity.

Because transition metal ions are essential nutrients for all organisms, metal withholding is one strategy that the mammalian host employs to inhibit microbial colonization. At sites of infection, the host innate immune system deploys metal-sequestering proteins to capture inorganic nutrients (magnesium, iron, and zinc, for example) in the extracellular space and starve invading pathogens. This immune mechanism presents a fascinating problem in biological coordination chemistry and metal homeostasis with central importance to infectious disease. Nolan shared her findings on the effectiveness of human calprotectin (CP) in the metal-withholding innate immune response.

CP is produced by neutrophils and can constitute more than 40 percent of total cytoplasmic protein in these cells. Neutrophils are white blood cells that are recruited to sites of infection and contribute to innate immunity, and they release CP and many other antimicrobial biomolecules into the extracellular space. Following release from the neutrophil, CP chelates transition metal ions in the extracellular milieu, thereby starving bacteria of these nutrients. In addition to this accepted role in the host/pathogen interaction, CP is implicated in a variety of pathophysiological conditions that range from cardiovascular disease to cancer, and it is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved biomarker for inflammatory conditions of the bowel. Thus, molecular and functional insights about CP also provide a foundation for conceptualizing and evaluating how CP participates in these facets of human disease.

Research conducted in Nolan’s lab has revealed many new aspects about how CP functions in metal homeostasis and host defense. She presented vignettes from her group’s fundamental research that highlighted advances towards elucidating the biological coordination chemistry of CP, deciphering how CP affects metal homeostasis in two microbial pathogens, and understanding the lifetime and fate of CP in the biological milieu.

“We discovered that CP uses Ca(II) ions to modulate its coordination chemistry, antimicrobial activity, and proteolytic stability,” Nolan explained. The group also deciphered how CP sequesters first-row transition metals, which included the evaluation of an unprecedented biological coordination motif.  

“Contrary to the accepted dogma, we discovered that CP is an iron-sequestering protein that blocks microbial acquisition of this essential nutrient,” Nolan said.

This paradigm-changing result adds another layer of complexity to the interplay between CP and transition metals in biological systems and affords a new model in which CP contributes to iron homeostasis. Subsequently, Nolan’s group has uncovered that CP also sequesters nickel, a metal nutrient important for the virulence of human pathogens that infect the gastrointestinal and urinary tracts. In total, this research program affords paradigms for discovering and elucidating new bioinorganic chemistry, advancing fundamental understanding of human innate immunity and microbial pathogenesis, and achieving new approaches to combating infectious disease. It highlights how fundamental chemistry can be used to open up new doors for exploring and understanding complex biological systems.

“I am fascinated by chemistry and biology and the natural world,” Nolan said. “I am inspired to use the chemistry toolkit to learn more, at the molecular level, about living systems, health, and disease. Studying the bioinorganic chemistry of the host/microbe interaction and infectious disease interfaces concepts and toolkits from many different disciplines and provides opportunities to contribute out-of-the-box ideas both for fundamental research and non-traditional ways to approach the prevention and treatment of infectious disease.”

New synthetic strategies for macromolecules

Just as natural-products chemists must often invent new reaction methodologies to access complex structures and their corresponding derivatives, Professor Jeremiah Johnson’s group seeks to develop new methodologies for the construction and modification of complex material libraries. Iterative library synthesis, function-based screening, and design optimization will ultimately yield basic knowledge, such as structure-function relationships for materials in specific applications, and new materials-based technologies that outperform current alternatives. Some examples of target material platforms and their associated applications are: novel, nanoscopic branched-arm star polymer architectures for in vivo drug delivery and supported catalysis; hybrid synthetic-natural hydrogels for correlation of the effects of network microstructure on cell response; and new types of semiconducting organometallic polymers and polymer films for sensing, supported catalysis, and energy conversion. 

“I am inspired by thinking creatively in the context of macromolecular synthesis, and then by seeing initial creations become reality via working with the awesome members of my group,” Johnson said. “Seeing our chemistry translate into commercial uses, such as helping patients, is the dream.”

Johnson presented his group’s efforts to develop a drug-agnostic materials platform that can enable the rapid improvement of therapeutic index for drugs with known targets and established efficacy but poor safety profiles.

“Accomplishing this goal would allow us to rescue drugs that are stalled in early clinical trials due to unmanageable side effects, or to utilize already approved drugs in new ways,” he explained.

One of the major challenges in chemical science is the development of methods and strategies for the controlled and scalable synthesis of large molecules, which are also known as macromolecules. Johnson’s research is driven by the desire to address this challenge and overcome it.

“We synthesize large abiotic molecules with improved structural control at the molecular level, which ultimately translates into new function at the macroscopic level,” he said.  “In addition, we focus a lot of our efforts on making these synthetic approaches scalable.”

Johnson’s presentation demonstrated a new synthetic strategy that can enable the kilo-scale synthesis of macromolecular prodrug scaffolds with tunable size and drug release kinetics. These materials can be employed to treat diseases ranging from cancer to liver fibrosis.

Celebrating basic science

Department head Timothy F. Jamison said the Department of Chemistry was pleased to co-host its third annual Alumni and Friends reception with the School of Science. As in years past, this event proved to be an excellent opportunity to showcase a sampling of the revolutionary work being conducted within the halls of the Department of Chemistry and, further still, the MIT campus as a whole.

“I cherish any opportunity I get to hear my colleagues present their research,” Jamison said in his closing remarks. “I am especially delighted that you were able to join us this evening to meet professors Nolan and Johnson and to learn about their spectacular scientific advances. Nolan and Johnson are representative of the extremely high caliber of research in the Department of Chemistry.”

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Solutions to great chemical science challenges

Professors Elizabeth M. Nolan and Jeremiah Johnson shared their efforts to address some of the greatest challenges currently faced by the chemical sciences at a recent Alumni and Friends reception hosted by the Department of Chemistry and the School of Science. Invited guests gathered in the Samberg Conference Center on May 16 for an evening of food, drink, and stimulating talks.

Employing metal withholding to inhibit microbial colonization

Nolan’s research addresses the chemistry and biology of human innate immunity and microbial pathogenesis. The lab employs toolkits of biological chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and microbiology to decipher the interplay between human host-defense molecules and microbes, and to evaluate new strategies for treating and preventing microbial infections. A significant portion of the research program is focused on metals and immunity.

Because transition metal ions are essential nutrients for all organisms, metal withholding is one strategy that the mammalian host employs to inhibit microbial colonization. At sites of infection, the host innate immune system deploys metal-sequestering proteins to capture inorganic nutrients (magnesium, iron, and zinc, for example) in the extracellular space and starve invading pathogens. This immune mechanism presents a fascinating problem in biological coordination chemistry and metal homeostasis with central importance to infectious disease. Nolan shared her findings on the effectiveness of human calprotectin (CP) in the metal-withholding innate immune response.

CP is produced by neutrophils and can constitute more than 40 percent of total cytoplasmic protein in these cells. Neutrophils are white blood cells that are recruited to sites of infection and contribute to innate immunity, and they release CP and many other antimicrobial biomolecules into the extracellular space. Following release from the neutrophil, CP chelates transition metal ions in the extracellular milieu, thereby starving bacteria of these nutrients. In addition to this accepted role in the host/pathogen interaction, CP is implicated in a variety of pathophysiological conditions that range from cardiovascular disease to cancer, and it is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved biomarker for inflammatory conditions of the bowel. Thus, molecular and functional insights about CP also provide a foundation for conceptualizing and evaluating how CP participates in these facets of human disease.

Research conducted in Nolan’s lab has revealed many new aspects about how CP functions in metal homeostasis and host defense. She presented vignettes from her group’s fundamental research that highlighted advances towards elucidating the biological coordination chemistry of CP, deciphering how CP affects metal homeostasis in two microbial pathogens, and understanding the lifetime and fate of CP in the biological milieu.

“We discovered that CP uses Ca(II) ions to modulate its coordination chemistry, antimicrobial activity, and proteolytic stability,” Nolan explained. The group also deciphered how CP sequesters first-row transition metals, which included the evaluation of an unprecedented biological coordination motif.  

“Contrary to the accepted dogma, we discovered that CP is an iron-sequestering protein that blocks microbial acquisition of this essential nutrient,” Nolan said.

This paradigm-changing result adds another layer of complexity to the interplay between CP and transition metals in biological systems and affords a new model in which CP contributes to iron homeostasis. Subsequently, Nolan’s group has uncovered that CP also sequesters nickel, a metal nutrient important for the virulence of human pathogens that infect the gastrointestinal and urinary tracts. In total, this research program affords paradigms for discovering and elucidating new bioinorganic chemistry, advancing fundamental understanding of human innate immunity and microbial pathogenesis, and achieving new approaches to combating infectious disease. It highlights how fundamental chemistry can be used to open up new doors for exploring and understanding complex biological systems.

“I am fascinated by chemistry and biology and the natural world,” Nolan said. “I am inspired to use the chemistry toolkit to learn more, at the molecular level, about living systems, health, and disease. Studying the bioinorganic chemistry of the host/microbe interaction and infectious disease interfaces concepts and toolkits from many different disciplines and provides opportunities to contribute out-of-the-box ideas both for fundamental research and non-traditional ways to approach the prevention and treatment of infectious disease.”

New synthetic strategies for macromolecules

Just as natural-products chemists must often invent new reaction methodologies to access complex structures and their corresponding derivatives, Professor Jeremiah Johnson’s group seeks to develop new methodologies for the construction and modification of complex material libraries. Iterative library synthesis, function-based screening, and design optimization will ultimately yield basic knowledge, such as structure-function relationships for materials in specific applications, and new materials-based technologies that outperform current alternatives. Some examples of target material platforms and their associated applications are: novel, nanoscopic branched-arm star polymer architectures for in vivo drug delivery and supported catalysis; hybrid synthetic-natural hydrogels for correlation of the effects of network microstructure on cell response; and new types of semiconducting organometallic polymers and polymer films for sensing, supported catalysis, and energy conversion. 

“I am inspired by thinking creatively in the context of macromolecular synthesis, and then by seeing initial creations become reality via working with the awesome members of my group,” Johnson said. “Seeing our chemistry translate into commercial uses, such as helping patients, is the dream.”

Johnson presented his group’s efforts to develop a drug-agnostic materials platform that can enable the rapid improvement of therapeutic index for drugs with known targets and established efficacy but poor safety profiles.

“Accomplishing this goal would allow us to rescue drugs that are stalled in early clinical trials due to unmanageable side effects, or to utilize already approved drugs in new ways,” he explained.

One of the major challenges in chemical science is the development of methods and strategies for the controlled and scalable synthesis of large molecules, which are also known as macromolecules. Johnson’s research is driven by the desire to address this challenge and overcome it.

“We synthesize large abiotic molecules with improved structural control at the molecular level, which ultimately translates into new function at the macroscopic level,” he said.  “In addition, we focus a lot of our efforts on making these synthetic approaches scalable.”

Johnson’s presentation demonstrated a new synthetic strategy that can enable the kilo-scale synthesis of macromolecular prodrug scaffolds with tunable size and drug release kinetics. These materials can be employed to treat diseases ranging from cancer to liver fibrosis.

Celebrating basic science

Department head Timothy F. Jamison said the Department of Chemistry was pleased to co-host its third annual Alumni and Friends reception with the School of Science. As in years past, this event proved to be an excellent opportunity to showcase a sampling of the revolutionary work being conducted within the halls of the Department of Chemistry and, further still, the MIT campus as a whole.

“I cherish any opportunity I get to hear my colleagues present their research,” Jamison said in his closing remarks. “I am especially delighted that you were able to join us this evening to meet professors Nolan and Johnson and to learn about their spectacular scientific advances. Nolan and Johnson are representative of the extremely high caliber of research in the Department of Chemistry.”

de MIT News https://ift.tt/2s7ZkwC