Is Massachusetts ready for carbon pricing?

Many economists across the political spectrum agree that carbon pricing could provide a cost-effective strategy to accelerate a transition to a low-carbon economy and reduce carbon emissions that play a key role in global climate change. Drawing on their research, legislators in several states are now working to enact bills that impose a per-ton fee on carbon emitters, but it’s no easy task to win political support for such measures.

On Jan. 25, a panel at MIT explored the benefits, costs, and political challenges involved in translating carbon pricing from concept into law in Massachusetts and beyond. Hosted by the student-led MIT Climate Action Team and held at the MIT Stata Center, the panel disucssion included Massachusetts state Sen. Michael Barrett and state Rep. Jennifer Benson, authors of two different carbon-pricing bills; Marc Breslow, research and policy director of the carbon-pricing research and advocacy group Climate XChange; and three experts on the topic who are affiliated with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change — Department of Urban Studies and Planning Associate Professor Janelle Knox-Hayes, Joint Program Co-director and Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer John Reilly, and Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research Director and MIT Sloan Professor Christopher Knittel. The panelists weighed advantages and disadvantages of carbon pricing as a climate-change solution, clarified differences between the two pending bills, and discussed political challenges faced by these bills.

Both bills would ultimately impose a $40 per-ton fee on carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions. Barrett’s bill is revenue neutral, returning 100 percent of revenue to state taxpayers and businesses; Benson’s bill, which is revenue positive, would return 80 percent of revenue to these constituents while applying the other 20 percent to clean energy projects. The intent of these rebates would be to compensate consumers for the higher prices they would pay under either bill for carbon-intensive products.

Barrett predicted that putting a price on carbon would lead to lower consumption of such products while reducing the “social cost of carbon” — what society must pay to meet the added health care, water infrastructure, emergency management, and other expenses associated with carbon emissions. Benson maintained that it’s critical to divert a portion of revenue raised by statewide carbon pricing to fund energy efficiency, renewable energy, and climate adaptation infrastructure.

Preferring the passage of either bill to the status quo, MIT panelists viewed carbon pricing as an optimal way to lower carbon emissions.

“At this point, any carbon-pricing bill is a positive move, and both of yours sound strong,” said Reilly, who nonetheless noted some challenges that carbon pricing cannot solve on its own. “We also face a big challenge in adapting infrastructure to climate change; one way or another we’re going to have to come up with funds to do that. Then there’s the issue of public infrastructure that affects fossil emissions. If you raise the price of gasoline, you can buy a more efficient vehicle, but if there’s not an effective subway system near you, you can’t use that. So I think some of those sorts of actions [would make] a stronger case.”

Knittel favored subsidizing solar panels and electric vehicles through a progressive income tax rather than via a carbon pricing scheme. “But at the end of the day, we’d be more than happy to have either one of these bills, and a price on carbon is by far the most efficient way to reduce [carbon dioxide] emissions,” said Knittel.

One key concern among members of the audience was the potential adverse effects of a carbon-pricing bill on low-income citizens.

“The most progressive thing to do if you care about working people is to have absolute revenue neutrality,” said Barrett, who, like Knittel, argued that solar and other renewable energy programs could best be funded through a progressive income tax. “I want to make sure that 100 percent of a carbon fee goes back to working people.” Concerned that a revenue-positive carbon pricing bill would be framed by opponents as a tax, he cautioned that such a bill would be politically unviable for fellow legislators.

Benson countered that anyone opposed to a carbon-pricing bill would still call it a tax, and that Massachusetts state polling shows that over 70 percent of people polled say they are willing to pay more for energy if they know the money is going toward environmental protection or improvement. “We don’t currently have such a revenue source to go toward these areas,” said Benson, noting that less than 1 percent of the state budget addresses environmental concerns. “If we really care about the environment, we have to be willing to put money into it at the state level.”

To overcome political resistance to carbon pricing, Knox-Hayes urged legislators to consider the cultural framing of proposed bills. “What’s really important when putting together policies is to connect the language of the policy to what the local polity cares about,” said Knox-Hayes, suggesting that the carbon-pricing bills avoid the use of the word “tax,” focus on benefits, and show how these bills can generate positive outcomes that address local concerns.

The panel also explored how Massachusetts could serve as a pilot project for additional statewide, national, and international carbon-pricing measures.

“In my optimal scenario, a state like Massachusetts passes a carbon tax, which shows the rest of the country that the economy hasn’t gone into the tank,” said Knittel. “British Columbia has served as a demonstration project for Senator Barrett and Representative Benson. In 2020, the [U.S.] Congress can use either bill as a poster child to show that carbon pricing actually works.”

Reilly pointed out that mechanisms will be needed to enable carbon pricing to work across state and national borders, but ruled out the possibility of any international carbon fee set by the United Nations, replacing those set by member nations.

“From an economic standpoint, we’d like to have the same price across the whole world, so we want to think about how we work toward that,” said Reilly. “The challenge there, is that we think that poorer countries must bear the same costs as richer countries, so that’s one of the reasons to think about ways we could set up transfers to assist them. It will be an issue to see how we balance things out and get closer to the ideal.”

Addressing another audience question of what MIT can do to help support passage of carbon-pricing bills in Massachusetts, Barrett acknowledged Knittel for providing technical and economic advice to him and Benson over the past four years, and MIT for convening forums such as this one.

“Over the last year, I’ve been at MIT a lot for conferences like this, and these exchanges really help,” said Barrett. “Just maintaining the dialogue is critically important.” Looking ahead, he added, “I think the Massachusetts State Senate is likely to enact carbon pricing this year. ... We need the critical involvement of university people, regardless of what school you’re from, all around Greater Boston, because we’re actually on the cusp of doing something.”

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Jing Li: Applying economics to energy technology

For the past four years, Jing Li ’11 has been studying energy technologies that could help the world move to a low-carbon future. Her expertise is technology diffusion and adoption. Fresh out of an economics PhD program at Harvard, Li says she “loves thinking about how technological progress comes about, how technology is adopted.”

She’s returning to MIT to do that and more — first as a postdoc for a year and then as an assistant professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. 

Her research focuses on the race to introduce better batteries into the marketplace. The availability of low-cost, high-energy-density, scalable, and safe batteries is critical in both transportation and power generation, which are two of the most polluting sectors in the energy ecosystem, Li points out. Better batteries could mean higher efficiency and lower emissions.

“We’re not quite there yet in terms of battery technology that checks all the boxes, but why not? There are many patents out there, but when do we expect to see them on the market?” she says.

Li’s training in economics allows her to examine each step as a technology progresses from the lab to the marketplace. She hopes her studies will help speed up that process.

“Energy is critical to everyday life, and low-carbon energy is critical to addressing climate change concerns,” she says. “At some point, I just started thinking about that, and I couldn’t let go.”

Li organizes her research on technology adoption around three core questions. First: Why aren’t adoption rates as high as we’d like or expect for a promising technology? Cost and pricing are sometimes the impediment, but not always. Sometimes it’s a question of infrastructure, as in the example of electric cars, which Li focused on in her dissertation. Electric cars need a reliable network of charging stations before widespread adoption is possible.

Li’s second question deals with the mysteries of technological innovation. She asks: “Is technological innovation a black box, and all we need to do is wait? Or is there scope for government policy to accelerate innovation by addressing inefficiencies?” She studies instances in which more funding for basic research could make a difference, or in which the inventions are ready but firms or consumers need a push in the form of measures such as government subsidies for the product to achieve higher levels of adoption.

The final question driving her research is: How can we meet growing energy demand in developing countries while protecting human health and the environment? Over the course of her education and the beginning of her research career, Li has explored fields from development economics to environmental economics and industrial organization.

“If we’re going to improve the lives of people in developing countries, energy consumption is going to play a big role,” she says. “But at the same time, how do we make things better for human health by alleviating pollution, improving air quality?”

With her fast-approaching professorship very much on her mind, Li has plans to take a close look at the economics curriculum at the Institute to see if there are any gaps in what’s being offered.

“There’s a history of high-quality energy economics classes at MIT,” she says. “I want to learn more about the classes that are being taught currently and bring back some of the really important parts of classes that are no longer around.”

She plans to meet with a wide range of students — from Sloan MBAs to undergraduates in engineering, science, and the humanities — to formulate a sense of which energy and economics issues they feel are most important. She’s keeping learning outside the classroom in mind, too. As an undergrad, she says she benefited immensely from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) “learning a lot about the grunt work of research.” And If the right research opportunity presents itself, she says she plans to create a UROP for undergrads working in energy economics.

Li says she looks forward to the chance to give back to her alma mater.

“MIT just feels special to me in a way that I cannot even articulate,” she says. “To me, it’s nerds — in the best sense of the word — coming together to celebrate learning and knowledge.”

This article appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. 

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Out of the lab and onto the page

When it comes to graduate student life, what happens in the lab often stays in the lab.

The MIT Graduate Student Admissions blog is trying to change that narrative, post by post. The blog grew out of an Independent Activities Period (IAP) writing workshop held in 2017, which was so successful it was offered again this year.

Lauren Stopfer, a third-year graduate student in biological engineering who attended the inaugural workshop and now serves on the blog’s editorial board, says “the blog was started to provide a window into the reality of MIT grad life,” like the “grind” of research, moments of epiphany, and even surviving winter in New England.

This inside look has attracted a strong readership of around 5,000 views per month. The blog is written for people considering graduate school, current students at MIT and elsewhere, and anyone seeking a view beyond the Infinite Corridor. Since its inception, the site has steadily evolved in terms of its range of topics, the number of posts, and even its purpose.

Stopfer says the blog became a lifeline over the past year. Having a platform was a way for her to be “a little freer” and to find her voice on topics ranging from cheap vacations to the proposed tax on graduation tuition.

Two of her fellow bloggers and editorial board members echo that sentiment. Jared Kehe, a third-year student in biological engineering, wrote a recent post expressing his love of coffee: “For our generation, coffee is practically a deity. We worship it, ritualize it, love it. We believe in coffee.“ Leigh Ann Kesler, who is in her sixth year in nuclear science, posted a poignant piece on a longtime lab mate moving on.  “I can see the blessings of my friendships, and how my life has been enriched by the diversity of my relationships without dwelling on the sadness that comes from parting ways,” she wrote.

A quick survey of posts reveals several common themes among MIT graduate student bloggers: food, managing failure, and figuring out the maze that is MIT (especially for those outside of the U.S.).

Diana Chien, program director of the MIT School of Engineering Communication Lab and one of the blog’s champions, says it’s been “amazing to watch the blog take hold.”

“Even better, for the workshop this year, those who started off learning how to blog are now running things and teaching tips and tricks to their fellow graduate students,” Chien says.

The IAP writing workshop is practical at heart. Much of the advice to future bloggers is broadly applicable, ranging from "just write (and then revise, revise, revise)," to understanding narrative patterns, to convincing grad students to get outside their customary academic writing comfort zones and be more conversational.

In addition to the seasoned bloggers, staff communicators from around MIT served as teachers, hands-on mentors, and editors. Anne Stuart, a communications officer in the electrical engineering and computer science department and a teacher, writer, and editor, shared her 13 go-to tips. Many of them are no-brainers, she says, but they trip up even professional writers, such as “be concise” and  “aim not to be misunderstood.”

Martha Eddison, who writes extensively in her role as the special assistant to President L. Rafael Reif, shared her own trade secret: The most important word in each sentence goes at the end.

The poster advertising this year’s course promised, tongue-in-cheek, that those who participated might find fame and fortune, in addition to polishing up their writing acumen. In fact, a few of the posts have been picked up by outside media such as the Times Higher Ed Supplement.

Other fans of the blog are closer to home. Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz, who kicked off the idea for the graduate blog about two years ago, said that MIT’s administrative leaders often discuss particular posts.

“It helps us, as we might read about issues that are concerning to students, and ones that we might not have otherwise been aware of,” he says. “The blogs paint a portrait of the whole graduate student — beyond research, their families, their day to day.”

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Integrating the promise of photonics

How can driverless cars detect obstructions when it’s foggy outside? What new forms of light communications can supercharge the internal housekeeping of data centers to enable ever-faster cloud computing? Can we detect a gas leak along a 1,000-mile pipeline remotely, and at an ultralow cost? These were some of the questions participants investigated at an AIM Photonics Academy training session.

More than 60 people gathered at MIT on Jan. 16 for three days of lectures and design labs on integrated photonics. The program was organized by AIM Photonics Academy, which is part of AIM Photonics Institute, one of 14 Manufacturing USA institutes jointly funded with the federal government to accelerate advanced manufacturing in the United States. Attendees, mostly from industry, came from the U.S. and abroad.

Integrated photonics uses complex optical circuits to process and transmit signals of light, similar to the routing of electrical signals in a computer microchip. Students learned how to design device components and lay out photonic integrated circuits (PICs), for submission to AIM’s multiproject wafer facility in Albany, New York. They also learned about different applications for PICs, including datacom, sensors, and LIDAR for driverless cars.

Critical partnership

The technology is still emerging, and companies are looking for outside training to fill in the gaps they are unable to fill by themselves. “This partnership is critical for accelerating the adoption of photonic integrated chip technology across our enterprise,” says Nick Rhenwrick, Lockheed Martin’s AIM program manager.

The three-day AIM Winter Academy is part of a suite of AIM Academy education and training offerings. AIM Photonics Academy will post teaching packages and roll out online self-paced courses in integrated photonics that will be available for free on its website. In the spring it will begin rolling out edX courses to give students critical hands-on experience designing photonic integrated circuits.

These initiatives are geared for higher-skilled learners. Concurrently, AIM Photonics Academy is committed to introducing younger students to integrated photonics, and is working with TED-Ed to create three videos for K-12 students.

Sharing know-how widely

Education director Sajan Saini spoke about the feedback he received from students in the AIM Winter Academy. “They’re excited about the new technology, want to figure out how to deploy it, and are committed to the time and effort needed to master fabless photonics tools,” says Saini. “The time is ripe to disseminate our online and onsite teaching content as broadly as possible.”

Photonic integrated circuits have the potential to offer blockbuster solutions for driverless cars, data centers, gas sensors, and microwave communications in the coming years.

The emergence of an expert manufacturing platform and multiple applications-driven demands are the hallmarks of an extended period of industrial innovation, and integrated photonics is primed to offer high-performance and efficient solutions.

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Graduate Student Council launches inclusion initiative

The Graduate Student Council (GSC) has undertaken important diversity and inclusion efforts in recent months, with a particular focus on improving the student experience in the Institute’s academic departments.

The GSC’s new Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee (DIS), which is led by SMArchS computation student Ty Austin, is at the center of this work. In the short time since its formation at the end of the 2016-17 academic year, the DIS has already made headway thanks in large part to its inaugural Department and Classroom Inclusion initiative (DCI). The peer-to-peer initiative’s mission is to establish student diversity representation in all of MIT’s graduate academic departments and programs through student diversity representatives called “conduits.”

The conduits are a cohort of over 30 graduate students serving 25 academic departments, and they recently came together in an assembly to discuss how to best implement diversity and inclusion programs campus-wide. The assembly gave them a platform to discuss how to share best practices among departments and to establish a permanent diversity and inclusion standard for the Institute.

“While it is not explicitly stated in MIT’s mission that the Institute is to provide a more diverse and inclusive environment, it does state we must advance technology and science that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century,” Austin says. “That’s impossible to do without being more equitable.”

Led by biological engineering graduate student Claire Duvallet, aeronautics and astronautics graduate student Arthur Brown, and chemical engineering graduate student German Parada, DCI’s signature program — the Conduit Assembly — took place on Nov. 15 and is slated to convene twice again in the spring semester.

Conduits from 25 graduate departments came together to talk about the current state of diversity and inclusion in their programs, and what they would like to see improved. Findings from the 2017 Student Quality of Life survey helped guide the conversation.

"I think what was really amazing was seeing 30 plus people there sharing what is happening in their departments and being so energized about coming together and all working toward the same goal,” Duvallet says. “A lot of people had a lot to say."

Several ideas came out of the assembly, including:

• The conduits for each school will appoint a conduit chair, or convener, thus creating five student-only diversity committees;
• Examine ways to create more opportunities for student involvement in faculty hiring and increase faculty-to-student mentorship;
• Expand the ICEO Office by having five full-time diversity managers (each one would be responsible for undergraduate and graduate diversity affairs for their school);
• Eventually adding more staff diversity representatives per department; and
• Mandatory diversity and inclusion workshops and departmental diversity and inclusion plans, including an accountability chart.

Civil and environmental engineering conduit and ACME member Tiziana Brown said the chart could clearly state goals for each department, progress toward meeting these goals, and the end result.

Satish Gupta, the DIS treasurer says that “brilliant ideas like Tiziana’s that give me a bunch of optimism about the longevity of this initiative.”

When the Conduit Assembly convenes in the spring, they will discuss a number of issues, including departmental diversity surveys for the five departments hosting Visiting Committee meetings in the fall of 2018. DIS’s work in this area aligns with the goals of the MindHandHeart initiative, a coalition of students, faculty, and staff working to make the MIT community more healthy, welcoming, and inclusive.

Sponsored by the Office of the Chancellor and MIT Medical, MindHandHeart’s Department Support Project (MHH-DSP) is bringing together department leaders, data analysts, students, and key campus experts to share best practices and strengthen MIT’s academic climates. This spring, DIS and MindHandHeart will partner in support of advancing diversity and inclusion efforts in MIT’s academic departments.

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Changing the color of 3-D printed objects

3-D printing has come a long way since the first rapid prototyping patent was rejected in 1980. The technology has evolved from basic designs to a wide range of highly-customizable objects. Still, there’s a big issue: Once objects are printed, they’re final. If you need a change, you’ll need a reprint.

But imagine if that weren’t the case — if, for example, you could change the color of your smartphone case or earrings on demand.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have gotten closer to making that a reality. In a new paper, they present ColorFab, a method for repeatedly changing the colors of 3-D printed objects, after fabrication.

Using their own 3-D printable ink that changes color when exposed to ultraviolet light, the team can recolor a multicolored object in just over 20 minutes — and they say they expect that number to decrease significantly with future improvements.

While the project is currently focused on plastics and other common 3-D printing materials, the researchers say that eventually people could instantly change the color of their clothes and other items.

“Largely speaking, people are consuming a lot more now than 20 years ago, and they’re creating a lot of waste,” says Stefanie Mueller, the X-Consortium Career Development Assistant Professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. “By changing an object’s color, you don’t have to create a whole new object every time.”

Mueller co-authored the paper with postdoc Parinya Punpongsanon, undergraduate Xin Wen, and researcher David Kim. It has been accepted to the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, which takes place in April in Montreal.

How it works

Previous color-changing systems have been somewhat limited in their capabilities, using single colors and 2-D designs, for example.

To move beyond single-color systems, the team developed a simple hardware/software workflow. First, using the ColorFab interface, users upload their 3-D model, pick their desired color patterns, and then print their fully colored object.  

After printing, changing the multicolored objects involves using ultraviolet light to activate desired colors and visible light to deactivate others. Specifically, the team uses an ultraviolet light to change the pixels on an object from transparent to colored, and a regular office projector to turn them from colored to transparent.

The team’s custom ink is made of a base dye, a photoinitiator, and light-adaptable dyes. The light-adaptable (photochromic) dyes bring out the color in the base dye, and the photoinitiator lets the base dye harden during 3-D printing.

“Appearance adaptivity in general is always a superior feature to have, and we’ve seen many other kinds of adaptivity enabled with manufactured objects,” says Changxi Zheng, an associate professor at Columbia University who co-directs Columbia’s Computer Graphics Group. “This work is a true breakthrough in being able to change the color of objects without repainting them.”

The team tested ColorFab on three criteria: recoloring time, precision, and how quickly the color decayed. A full recoloring process took 23 minutes. However, the researchers note that they could speed up the process by using a more powerful light or adding more light-adaptable dye to the ink.

They also found the colors to be a bit grainy, which they hope to improve on by activating colors closer together on an object. For example, activating blue and red might show purple, while activating red and green would show yellow.

Mueller says that the goal is for people to be able to rapidly match their accessories to their outfits in an efficient, less wasteful way. Another idea is for retail stores to be able to customize products in real-time, if, for example, a shopper wants to try on an article of clothing or accessory in a different color.

“This is the first 3-D-printable photochromic system that has a complete printing and recoloring process that’s relatively easy for users,” Punpongsanon says. “It’s a big step for 3-D printing to be able to dynamically update the printed object after fabrication in a cost-effective manner.”

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Coding, thinking, sharing, building

Sharon Kipruto knew giving birth was a precarious endeavor. In her home country of Kenya, the maternal death rate is much higher than in the United States — 510 deaths versus 23 deaths, per 100,000 live births. In part, that’s because there aren’t enough doctors to meet patient demand. And without visits, women aren’t getting prenatal information that could potentially save their lives.

Kipruto realized this was a problem ripe for intervention. Instead of relying on doctor visits to disseminate information, she thought: “Why not send the information directly to the women?”

Now she’s working on a project that runs with this idea: sending informative, automated text messages. About 88 percent of people in Kenya have mobile phones, so that could be an effective way to give pregnant women information they need, when they need it, says Kipruto, an senior in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

Kipruto is among 135 students participating in the 2017-2018 Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, better known as SuperUROP. Launched by EECS in 2012, the program was later expanded to all departments in the School of Engineering. This year, for the first time, the program was open to students from the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences as well.

The SuperUROP scholars’ diverse projects include investigations to improve health, keep people better informed, and make technology more attuned to people's feelings.

“It is remarkable in how many fields the students are contributing,” says Dirk Englund, an associate professor of EECS and instructor of 6.UAR, the 12-unit seminar course that all SuperUROP students take.

Focusing on health

Many student projects focus on approaches to better treat disease. Claire Goul, a junior in EECS, for example, is investigating a tiny biomedical delivery system: DNA nanoparticles. Made of single-stranded DNA, the nanoparticles fold themselves into biological containers, which can transport therapeutic molecules into cells.

Part of maintaining human health is the ability to access and share detailed medical histories. But right now, the process isn’t very streamlined, says Kevin Liu, a senior in mathematics and EECS.

“Health care data is not really in the hands of patients. It's in the hands of doctors, hospitals, and health care insurance companies,” Liu says. “We want to be able to move this data back to patients, and let patients decide whom to share it with.”

To do that, Liu is working with blockchain technology, the system that underlies the celebrated digital currency Bitcoin. What makes the blockchain so useful is that it keeps track of transactions, and when applied to medical records, patients would be able to know who sees their data. An innovative add-on to blockchain code, a feature called smart contracts, would also allow patients to determine whom they want to share data with, as well as who has the ability to update that data. Liu is hoping to build a web interface that makes this technology easy and intuitive to use, even for people who’ve never coded before.

Making information visible

Other students are looking into ways to harness information to benefit society.

Mikayla Murphy, a senior in civil and environmental engineering, is using information to hold people accountable. She’s visualizing data collected by an MIT GOV/LAB-developed machine learning pipeline, which analyzes city government websites to determine whether those governments are being transparent.

There’s reason to look. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times published an exposé on the exorbitant salaries of city administrators of Bell, California (population 38,000). Bell’s city manager was paid a whopping $800,000 per year — the nation’s highest salary for someone in that role, according to the investigation. Murphy says that practices such as publishing city budgets and meeting minutes online can help citizens keep their representatives, and their payrolls, in check.

“I've been really happy working on this project because it's something I've been interested in this entire time here at MIT: how to apply data science skills for social good,” Murphy says.

Jeremy Stroming, a senior in aeronautics and astronautics, is also working toward visualizing a better world — literally. Stroming is building a platform for visually illustrating trends in Earth's subsystems, such as oxygen levels in the oceans, melting sea ice, or changes in average surface temperature.

Stroming’s project aims to find ways to better communicate what’s happening to the Earth so users can, as he says, “have a conversation” with the planet. Not only could people better understand the planet and its systems, especially those going awry, but they could also find out about actions they can take using the platform, Stroming says. These might include recommendations for how to adjust diet, support sustainable businesses, or contact government representatives to advocate for change.

Stroming recognizes that learning about the Earth’s ills can be intimidating. He hopes to make it inviting and empowering. He has been planning a hackathon to make the portal as irresistible as possible, “so that it sucks you in, like Facebook.”

Setting moods with music

With its versatility, technology can also improve our leisure. Patrick Egbuchulam, an EECS senior, wants to enhance video game play by making the music responsive to what a player is experiencing.

Most of the time, video game music is precomposed, fixed, Egbuchulam says. Yet a person could have a totally different experience of the game, with different attendant emotions, from the first time playing to the 10th. Egbuchulam’s project is to make the soundtrack match player experience in real-time. This could include making the music slower and darker for tense, serious moments, or brighter and faster, for exciting, hopeful ones, by changing musical traits such as the melody’s tempo, mode, and key (major or minor key, for example). With this approach, he says, “the music is as unique as a game play.”

As the fall term closed, SuperUROP scholars showcased their work at Proposal Pitch, a poster session, followed by the annual SuperUROP community dinner. There, they heard guest speaker Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of The Engine, describe the challenges facing startup founders who are developing “tough technologies” — that is, breakthrough concepts that require extensive time and funding to bring to market.

“Tough-tech companies have historically been underserved and underfunded, leaving many breakthrough inventions stuck in the lab,” Rae told the students. The Engine, an MIT-backed startup incubator and accelerator launched in 2016, provides long-term capital, equipment, lab space, and other support for such companies.

SuperUROP participants are only halfway through the year-long program, but organizers say they’ve already come a long way.

“I am deeply impressed about their progress in their research projects and their ability to communicate them,” Englund says.

The scholars return to their labs and classrooms in February.

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