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Monday, November 9th, 2015
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| 4:30a |
MIT announces “Innovation Node” in Hong Kong MIT today announced the launch of an “Innovation Node” in Hong Kong, a collaborative space that aims to connect the MIT community with unique resources — including advanced manufacturing capabilities — and other opportunities in Hong Kong and the neighboring Pearl River Delta (PRD).
Set to launch next summer, the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node will convene MIT students, faculty, and researchers to work on various entrepreneurial and research projects alongside Hong Kong-based students and faculty, MIT alumni, entrepreneurs, and businesses. By combining resources and talent, the Innovation Node aims to help students learn how to move ideas more rapidly from lab to market.
Other new activities enabled through the Innovation Node will include: increased opportunities for MIT students to conduct research in collaboration with Hong Kong universities; events focused on innovation and entrepreneurship; internships at companies in the region; and the formation of a makerspace and startup programs for student entrepreneurs.
The Innovation Node, conceived and run by the MIT Innovation Initiative, is expected to launch with an initial cohort of MIT students traveling to Hong Kong in July to work on various projects and participate in workshops with local students. A search is under way for a Hong Kong-based executive director. Initial funding for the node has been provided by Hong Kong-based MIT alumni and other friends of the Institute.
The announcement was made today by MIT President L. Rafael Reif, who is visiting Hong Kong this week with a delegation from MIT. Among guests at an MIT reception to introduce the node were prominent local alumni, educators, and Hong Kong government officials.
“By bringing MIT to Hong Kong and Hong Kong to MIT, the Innovation Node will deepen MIT’s activities in Hong Kong and, through Hong Kong, in the entire Pearl River Delta region,” Reif said. “In creating this node in Hong Kong, MIT is committing to advancing our engagement with the region in a mutually beneficial way.”
Activities carried out by the Innovation Node will be overseen by a steering committee of MIT faculty and administrators, including: Charles Sodini, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering, who will also serve as faculty director for the node; Innovation Initiative co-directors Fiona Murray, the Bill Porter Professor of Entrepreneurship, and Vladimir Bulović, the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technologies and professor of electrical engineering; and Yasheng Huang, the International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business and associate dean for international programs and action learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Richard Lester, associate provost for international activities and the Japan Steel Industry Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, will chair the steering committee.
"In preparing for a career in today’s global innovation economy, MIT’s students need an education that presents a global outlook on the challenges and opportunities in innovation and entrepreneurship," Murray says. "Building on MIT’s long record of engagement in Hong Kong and mainland China, the Innovation Node will allow many different MIT programs to imagine week, month, and summer-long experiences that enrich education, research, and our connection to real-world opportunities for impact."
The node will be advised in Hong Kong by a local group of MIT alumni that will help coordinate programs for current MIT students, alumni, and the local community.
Fast manufacturing
In addition to the presence of strong research universities, a major reason why MIT chose to establish an Innovation Node in Hong Kong is because it provides ready access to a unique manufacturing infrastructure that encourages rapid prototyping and scale-up, Sodini says.
About an hour’s commute from Hong Kong’s Central District lies Shenzhen, a city home to many scientists and engineers — and fast, low-volume manufacturing. “Manufacturers in Shenzhen have mastered the ability to take a prototype device to unit quantities of hundreds overnight,” Sodini says. “This unparalleled speed of small quantity manufacturing is unique to Shenzhen.”
MIT students will learn hands-on lessons in designing and manufacturing for commercialization, Sodini says: “Giving our students access and experience with this capability educates them in how to move more quickly from idea to product.”
Through the node, students will also be linked to opportunities along the Greater Pearl River Delta, a network of roughly a dozen major cities in southern China — including Hong Kong and Shenzhen — that serve as innovation hubs and economic drivers for the country.
Many MIT-based startups, in fact, already travel to Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region to prototype and produce devices, MIT Provost Martin Schmidt says. “Having a connection to this region will strengthen this access, and will open opportunities to develop new enterprises in the region,” he says.
Victor K. Fung SM ’66, one of several Hong Kong alumni on the local advisory group for the Innovation Node, said that the new model for Hong Kong-PRD partnership is one of collaborating far higher up the supply chain, at the early stages of innovation, where ideas for products or services are conceived, prototyped, and iterated.
“With this node,” Fung says, “MIT is bringing its cutting-edge learning and research programs to global innovation’s new frontier. This is an exciting and highly significant development.”
Node activities
The MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node builds on more than 20 years of collaborations between MIT and Greater China. These have included partnerships between MIT and several Hong Kong universities, including the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Hong Kong, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Initially, the Node will carry out numerous activities to boost the innovative and entrepreneurial capabilities of MIT students, faculty, researchers, and alumni, in collaboration with the Hong Kong community. These include:
- Internship opportunities: Facilitating internships for MIT students at companies in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and along the Pearl River Delta through the China program of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI).
- Educational programs: Weeklong or longer workshops, where MIT and local innovators can work together on venture-building activities in global contexts. MIT centers and programs such as the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship will run these programs.
- Engagement opportunities: Expand the current “action-learning” activities for students and student teams through the MIT China Lab, which pairs MIT Sloan students with students from top business schools in China.
- Innovation-focused events: Weekly or monthly events will convene MIT-affiliated partners of the Node, such as the MIT Club of Hong Kong, MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program, and the MIT Technology Review for innovation-focused programming.
In the future, organizers also plan to create in the Hong Kong node what is known as a “makerspace”: a facility equipped with advanced tools and materials for invention and prototyping. MIT is currently in the process of building a new makerspace on its Cambridge campus that will be linked to the node’s proposed makerspace. The spaces will be equipped with similar tools and offer the same training.
The idea is to facilitate a way for MIT and Hong Kong students to collaborate physically or virtually — through advanced telecommunication services — to drive ideas toward commercialization. For instance, medical devices, sensors, or robotics could be prototyped on the MIT campus or at the node, tested in the Boston or Hong Kong regions, and have small quantities manufactured in Shenzhen. | | 10:59a |
Hydrogel superglue is 90 percent water Nature has developed innovative ways to solve a sticky challenge: Mussels and barnacles stubbornly glue themselves to cliff faces, ship hulls, and even the skin of whales. Likewise, tendons and cartilage stick to bone with incredible robustness, giving animals flexibility and agility.
The natural adhesive in all these cases is hydrogel — a sticky mix of water and gummy material that creates a tough and durable bond.
Now engineers at MIT have developed a method to make synthetic, sticky hydrogel that is more than 90 percent water. The hydrogel, which is a transparent, rubber-like material, can adhere to surfaces such as glass, silicon, ceramics, aluminum, and titanium with a toughness comparable to the bond between tendon and cartilage on bone.
In experiments to demonstrate its robustness, the researchers applied a small square of their hydrogel between two plates of glass, from which they then suspended a 55-pound weight. They also glued the hydrogel to a silicon wafer, which they then smashed with a hammer. While the silicon shattered, its pieces remained stuck in place.
Such durability makes the hydrogel an ideal candidate for protective coatings on underwater surfaces such as boats and submarines. As the hydrogel is biocompatible, it may also be suitable for a range of health-related applications, such as biomedical coatings for catheters and sensors implanted in the body.
“You can imagine new applications with this very robust, adhesive, yet soft material,” says Xuanhe Zhao, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. For example, Zhao’s group is currently exploring uses for the hydrogel in soft robotics, where the material may serve as synthetic tendon and cartilage, or in flexible joints.
“It’s a pretty tough and adhesive gel that’s mostly water,” Hyunwoo Yuk, a graduate student in mechanical engineering and the lead author of a paper on the work, says. “Basically, it’s tough, bonding water.”
Zhao and his students publish their results today in the journal Nature Materials.
A stretchy anchor
A tough, flexible hydrogel that bonds strongly requires two characteristics, Zhao found: energy dissipation and chemical anchorage. A hydrogel that dissipates energy is essentially able to stretch significantly without retaining all the energy used to stretch it. A chemically anchored hydrogel adheres to a surface by covalently bonding its polymer network to that surface.
“Chemical anchorage plus bulk dissipation leads to tough bonding,” Zhao says. “Tendons and cartilage harness these, so we’re really learning this principle from nature.”
In developing the hydrogel, Yuk mixed a solution of water with a dissipative ingredient to create a stretchy, rubbery material. He then placed the hydrogel atop various surfaces, such as aluminum, ceramic, glass, and titanium, each modified with functional silanes — molecules that created chemical links between each surface and its hydrogel.
The researchers then tested the hydrogel’s bond using a standard peeling test, in which they measured the force required to peel the hydrogel from a surface. On average, they found the hydrogel’s bond was as tough as 1,000 joules per square meter — about the same level as tendon and cartilage on bone.
Zhao group compared these results with existing hydrogels, as well as elastomers, tissue adhesives, and nanoparticle gels, and found that the new hydrogel adhesive has both higher water content and a much stronger bonding ability.
“We basically broke a world record in bonding toughness of hydrogels, and it was inspired by nature,” Yuk says.
Sticky robotics
In addition to testing the hydrogel’s toughness with a hammer and a weight, Zhao and his colleagues explored its use in robotic joints, using small spheres of hydrogel to connect short pipes to simulate robotic limbs.
“Hydrogels can act as actuators,” Zhao says. “Instead of using conventional hinges, you can use this soft material with strong bonding to rigid materials, and it can give a robot many more degrees of freedom.”
The researchers also looked into its application as an electrical conductor. Yuk and other students added salts to a hydrogel sample, and attached the hydrogel to two metal plates connected via electrodes to an LED light. They found that the hydrogel enabled the flow of salt ions within the electrical loop, ultimately lighting up the LED.
“We create extremely robust interfaces for hydrogel-metal hybrid conductors,” Yuk adds.
Zhao’s group is currently most interested in exploring the hydrogel’s use in soft robotics, as well as in bioelectronics.
“Since the hydrogel contains over 90 percent water, the bonding may be regarded as a water adhesive, which is tougher than natural glues, such as in barnacles and mussels, and bio-inspired underwater glues,” Zhao says. “The work has significant implications in understanding bio-adhesion, as well as practical applications such as in hydrogel coatings, biomedical devices, tissue engineering, water treatment, and underwater glues.”
This research was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation. | | 2:30p |
Edward Boyden wins 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences MIT researchers took home several awards last night at the 2016 Breakthrough Prize ceremony at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
Edward Boyden, an associate professor of media arts and sciences, biological engineering, and brain and cognitive sciences, was one of five scientists honored with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, given for “transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life.” He will receive $3 million for the award.
MIT physicists also contributed to a project that won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. That prize went to five experiments investigating the oscillation of subatomic particles known as neutrinos. More than 1,300 contributing physicists will share in the recognition for their work, according to the award announcement. Those physicists include MIT associate professor of physics Joseph Formaggio and his team, as well as MIT assistant professor of physics Lindley Winslow.
Larry Guth, an MIT professor of mathematics, was honored with the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, which is given to promising junior researchers who have already produced important work in mathematics. Liang Fu, an assistant professor of physics, was honored with the New Horizons in Physics Prize, which is awarded to promising junior researchers who have already produced important work in fundamental physics.
“By challenging conventional thinking and expanding knowledge over the long term, scientists can solve the biggest problems of our time,” said Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and CEO of Facebook, and one of the prizes’ founders. “The Breakthrough Prize honors achievements in science and math so we can encourage more pioneering research and celebrate scientists as the heroes they truly are.”
Optogenetics
Boyden was honored for the development and implementation of optogenetics, a technique in which scientists can control neurons by shining light on them. Karl Deisseroth, a Stanford University professor who worked with Boyden to pioneer the technique, was also honored with one of the life sciences prizes.
Optogenetics relies on light-sensitive proteins, originally isolated from bacteria and algae. About 10 years ago, Boyden and Deisseroth began engineering neurons to express these proteins, allowing them to selectively stimulate or silence them with pulses of light. More recently, Boyden has developed additional proteins that are even more sensitive to light and can respond to different colors.
Scientists around the world have used optogenetics to reveal the brain circuitry underlying normal neural function as well as neurological disorders such as autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression.
Boyden is a member of the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Neutrino oscillations
The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to five research projects investigating the nature of neutrinos: Daya Bay (China); KamLAND (Japan); K2K/T2K (Japan); Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Canada); and Super-Kamiokande (Japan). Researchers with these experiments were recognized “for the fundamental discovery of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics.”
Formaggio and his team at MIT have been collaborating on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) project since 2005. Research at the observatory, 2 kilometers underground in a mine near Sudbury, Ontario, demonstrated that neutrinos change their type — or “flavor” — on their way to Earth from the sun.
Winslow has been a collaborator on KamLAND, located in a mine in Japan, since 2001. Using antineutrinos from nuclear reactors, this experiment demonstrated that the change in flavor was energy-dependent. The combination of these results solved the solar neutrino puzzle and proved that neutrinos have mass.
The MIT SNO group has participated heavily on the analysis of neutrino data, particularly during that experiment’s final measurement phase. The MIT KamLAND group is involved with the next phase, KamLAND-Zen, which is searching for a rare nuclear process that if observed, would make neutrinos their own antiparticles.
Reaching new horizons
Guth, who will receive a $100,000 prize, was honored for his “ingenious and surprising solutions to long standing open problems in symplectic geometry, Riemannian geometry, harmonic analysis, and combinatorial geometry.”
Guth’s work at MIT focuses on combinatorics, or the study of discrete structures, and how sets of lines intersect each other in space. He also works in the area of harmonic analysis, studying how sound waves interact with each other.
Guth’s father, MIT physicist Alan Guth, won the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2015.
Fu will share a New Horizons in Physics Prize with two other researchers: B. Andrei Bernevig of Princeton University and Xiao-Liang Qi of Stanford University. The physicists were honored for their “outstanding contributions to condensed matter physics, especially involving the use of topology to understand new states of matter.”
Fu works on theories of topological insulators — a new class of materials whose surfaces can freely conduct electrons even though their interiors are electrical insulators — and topological superconductors. Such materials may provide insight into quantum physics and have possible applications in creating transistors based on the spin of particles rather than their charge.
Yesterday’s prize ceremony was hosted by producer/actor/director Seth MacFarlane; awards were presented by the prize sponsors and by celebrities including actors Russell Crowe, Hilary Swank, and Lily Collins. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.
“Breakthrough Prize laureates are making fundamental discoveries about the universe, life, and the mind,” Yuri Milner said. “These fields of investigation are advancing at an exponential pace, yet the biggest questions remain to be answered.” |
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