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Thursday, May 12th, 2016
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Determined to make a change The first education course Ruth Park took at MIT explored the history of U.S.’s education system, its complex, deep-rooted problems, and the many reforms that have backfired in some way. While many of her classmates were disheartened by what they learned, Park had a very different reaction.
“I found it really empowering,” she says. “Understanding the problem more in depth showed me where I might be able to make a difference and that this is something that really needs to be changed. This is one thing that can sustainably help people out of poverty.”
Experiencing education
Much of Park’s interest in the education system stems from her own background. Park’s parents were volunteer circuit missionaries, which meant her family periodically moved to new communities and often struggled financially. Park, who at times juggled three part-time jobs to help her family make ends meet, attended nine different schools between kindergarten and the end of high school.
“I think it was really cool to see a lot of different schools and experience a wide range of teaching and different school cultures,” says Park. “Especially because a lot of the schools I went to were in the more low-income areas.”
Park has always been an intrinsically motivated student, which helped her beat the odds and make it to MIT, but many of her friends were not as fortunate. In fact, it was watching her friends fail to overcome the many obstacles they faced that pushed her to think more deeply about the U.S. education system.
“A lot of my friends found school to be a chore, something that they were forced to go to,” she says. “So they didn't do well, which closed doors to options beyond low-skilled labor. And the thing is, I feel like that didn't have to happen — if school was engaging, it might have enabled them to break out of the poverty cycle they’re stuck in.”
Finding her calling
When Park first arrived at MIT, she was set on becoming a doctor. However, during her junior year, as she began taking education courses and became increasingly involved in extracurriculars focused on education and outreach, things started to click. It became clear to her that she would find it most fulfilling to combine her own experiences with everything she was learning, to improve the lives of students all over the U.S.
“I realized I wanted to work on systemic changes in education,” she says. “Currently education is supposed to be the one leveling ground between people of different economic statuses, and it's not doing that. But it's definitely possible, and I feel that if I worked my entire life to make a change, and inspired other people along the way to continue to make changes, even if the actual change I ended up making was small, I would still be happy.”
At the beginning of her senior year, Park changed her major from biology to computational biology. Although it was a late change, she felt it made the best use of her time left at MIT.
“Computer science is a field that permeates all others,” she says. “And technology enables scalability, efficiency, and effectiveness — something education could use more of.”
Improving learning
Park immediately immersed herself in computer science courses and is currently working on an education-based research project through MIT’s SuperUROP program. The project centers on platforms for online courses, where students have been known to create multiple user accounts to help them cheat their way to better grades. Park’s work focuses on learning-gain differences among users based on their approach to the course material — not only whether they’re cheating or not, but how they’re cheating.
“If it's true that people using a certain method of cheating actually learn better, then maybe instead of punishing and discouraging students from this approach, the system itself should change to accommodate this kind of behavior,” she explains. “Because the whole point of this platform is to facilitate learning.”
Park appreciates the importance of this project, given that online courses are becoming more relevant and need to continue evolving to best serve their students. However, working with these online platforms also helped her further consider the challenges that students from low-income backgrounds face.
“It's easy to feel like if we just give low-income students more tools and more access to valuable resources, then things will get better,” she explains. “But honestly, coming from a low-income background, the biggest barrier I was constantly coming up against was just not thinking of it in the first place. I never thought to look for these kinds of tools and resources online, and I know I’m not alone.”
Park is also involved in MIT Design for America, an organization that uses design and engineering to create social impact. Park and her team spent her senior fall semester tackling the problem of gauging how well high school students understand the material being presented in class. Park and her team recognized that it is often hard for students to interrupt the teacher for clarification, so they wanted to find a better way. They designed a clicker that students could use to either indicate when they were confused while their teacher was talking, or specify their understanding of the material at designated check-in points.
However, the team soon realized that the clicker was largely ineffective, which revealed an even more fundamental issue.
“The thing is, students have to be actively engaged to be able to report whether they understand something,” Park says. “So gauging student understanding is dependent on a much larger problem, which is, how do you engage students?”
It is the same problem Park frequently encountered growing up in low-income areas, and one she hopes to someday address.
This semester, Park is leading a Design for America project aimed at improving mental wellness on campus. Again, Park’s passion for the project was born out of her own experiences. Her senior fall semester, overwhelmed by a demanding course load and other pressures, Park began isolating herself from her friends and was unable to recognize that things needed to change. Eventually she sought help and bounced back, but she wants to prevent other students from ending up in a similar situation.
She and her Design for America team are designing an online program called InTouch that will have smartphone application and browser-based forms. The program allows users to track their mood over time.
“The idea is that it helps you be more mindful of how you're feeling and be more in touch with yourself,” says Park. “And you can see trends. You can see how you're changing over time.”
Users share some of that information with close friends through the tool, raising awareness for the emotional states of friends and family in their close network and allowing them to easily reach out to seek or provide support as needed.
The final component of the program is a digital mailbox that collects notes of encouragement and gratitude from friends and family until the user is feeling down.
“You open it then, and then you're showered with a lot of encouragement, and you're reminded how much you're appreciated and loved,” explains Park. “The idea is that it will give you enough of a boost to reach out for help or make another plan of action to address whatever is bringing you down.”
The project is a work in progress, but Park hopes it can help college students lead happier and healthier lives, first at MIT and then beyond.
After MIT
Park is currently taking some extra time to finish her degree at MIT, and this summer she will utilize her computer science skills during an internship at Athena Health, a company that works on digital tools to improve health care services.
Park isn’t sure exactly where her passion for educational reform will take her after graduation, but she is excited about the many possibilities that exist, and carries with her a determination to make a difference no matter what route she takes.
“Being at MIT, surrounded by other high-achieving people with big dreams, made me realize that just because there are tragedies in the world that have been there for generations doesn't mean it can't change, and doesn't mean that I can't be the one to help make that change,” she says. “It needs to be people like us who have access to opportunities, that make these changes because we're the ones who can.” | | 3:00p |
Ingestible origami robot In experiments involving a simulation of the human esophagus and stomach, researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tiny origami robot that can unfold itself from a swallowed capsule and, steered by external magnetic fields, crawl across the stomach wall to remove a swallowed button battery or patch a wound.
The new work, which the researchers are presenting this week at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, builds on a long sequence of papers on origami robots from the research group of Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
“It’s really exciting to see our small origami robots doing something with potential important applications to health care,” says Rus, who also directs MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “For applications inside the body, we need a small, controllable, untethered robot system. It’s really difficult to control and place a robot inside the body if the robot is attached to a tether.”
Joining Rus on the paper are first author Shuhei Miyashita, who was a postdoc at CSAIL when the work was done and is now a lecturer in electronics at the University of York, in England; Steven Guitron, a graduate student in mechanical engineering; Shuguang Li, a CSAIL postdoc; Kazuhiro Yoshida of Tokyo Institute of Technology, who was visiting MIT on sabbatical when the work was done; and Dana Damian of the University of Sheffield, in England.
Although the new robot is a successor to one reported at the same conference last year, the design of its body is significantly different. Like its predecessor, it can propel itself using what’s called a “stick-slip” motion, in which its appendages stick to a surface through friction when it executes a move, but slip free again when its body flexes to change its weight distribution.
Also like its predecessor — and like several other origami robots from the Rus group — the new robot consists of two layers of structural material sandwiching a material that shrinks when heated. A pattern of slits in the outer layers determines how the robot will fold when the middle layer contracts.
Material difference
The robot’s envisioned use also dictated a host of structural modifications. “Stick-slip only works when, one, the robot is small enough and, two, the robot is stiff enough,” says Guitron. “With the original Mylar design, it was much stiffer than the new design, which is based on a biocompatible material.”
To compensate for the biocompatible material’s relative malleability, the researchers had to come up with a design that required fewer slits. At the same time, the robot’s folds increase its stiffness along certain axes.
But because the stomach is filled with fluids, the robot doesn’t rely entirely on stick-slip motion. “In our calculation, 20 percent of forward motion is by propelling water — thrust — and 80 percent is by stick-slip motion,” says Miyashita. “In this regard, we actively introduced and applied the concept and characteristics of the fin to the body design, which you can see in the relatively flat design.”
It also had to be possible to compress the robot enough that it could fit inside a capsule for swallowing; similarly, when the capsule dissolved, the forces acting on the robot had to be strong enough to cause it to fully unfold. Through a design process that Guitron describes as “mostly trial and error,” the researchers arrived at a rectangular robot with accordion folds perpendicular to its long axis and pinched corners that act as points of traction.
In the center of one of the forward accordion folds is a permanent magnet that responds to changing magnetic fields outside the body, which control the robot’s motion. The forces applied to the robot are principally rotational. A quick rotation will make it spin in place, but a slower rotation will cause it to pivot around one of its fixed feet. In the researchers’ experiments, the robot uses the same magnet to pick up the button battery.
Porcine precedents
The researchers tested about a dozen different possibilities for the structural material before settling on the type of dried pig intestine used in sausage casings. “We spent a lot of time at Asian markets and the Chinatown market looking for materials,” Li says. The shrinking layer is a biodegradable shrink wrap called Biolefin.
To design their synthetic stomach, the researchers bought a pig stomach and tested its mechanical properties. Their model is an open cross-section of the stomach and esophagus, molded from a silicone rubber with the same mechanical profile. A mixture of water and lemon juice simulates the acidic fluids in the stomach.
Every year, 3,500 swallowed button batteries are reported in the U.S. alone. Frequently, the batteries are digested normally, but if they come into prolonged contact with the tissue of the esophagus or stomach, they can cause an electric current that produces hydroxide, which burns the tissue. Miyashita employed a clever strategy to convince Rus that the removal of swallowed button batteries and the treatment of consequent wounds was a compelling application of their origami robot.
“Shuhei bought a piece of ham, and he put the battery on the ham,” Rus says. “Within half an hour, the battery was fully submerged in the ham. So that made me realize that, yes, this is important. If you have a battery in your body, you really want it out as soon as possible.”
“This concept is both highly creative and highly practical, and it addresses a clinical need in an elegant way,” says Bradley Nelson, a professor of robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. “It is one of the most convincing applications of origami robots that I have seen.” | | 4:00p |
Lung cancer “breathalyzer” wins $100K Entrepreneurship Competition A team of MIT and Harvard University students who invented a smartphone-connected sensor that detects lung cancer from a single breath took home the grand prize from Wednesday night’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.
Astraeus Technologies won the $100,000 Robert P. Goldberg Grand prize at the 27th annual competition, beating out seven other finalist teams that pitched business ideas to a panel of expert judges and a lively capacity crowd in Kresge Auditorium. Five other teams innovating in big data, creative arts, and food service took home separate category prizes totaling $40,000.
Astraeus has developed a postage-stamp-sized device, called the L CARD, that detects certain gases indicative of lung cancer. When someone blows onto the device, a connected mobile app turns a smartphone screen red if those gases are present and green if they aren’t.
Inventor Joseph Azzarelli, an MIT PhD student in chemistry, demonstrated the device on stage by spraying a syringe filled with the lung-cancer-signaling gases onto the device, causing the smartphone screen to flash red. “The L CARD reacts and sends instantaneous information to the physician that further attention is required,” Azzarelli said while a ripple of excitement spread through the crowd.
“We love that demo as much as you guys do,” added team member Jay Kumar, a student at Harvard Medical School.
After the competition, Azzarelli told MIT News the prize money will go toward product development and first-round clinical trials in research hospitals in the area.
Cheaper, safer screening
Lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer in the United States, causing more deaths than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined, according to the World Health Organization. “Part of the reason lung cancer is so deadly is that the current gold standard screening test — the low-dose CT scan — is wholly inadequate in a variety of ways,” said team member Graham Lieberman, an MBA student at the Harvard Business School.
Kumar delved into more detail, explaining that CT scans cost about $800 for each scan, have a high false-positive rate, and expose patients to radiation that can increase their cancer risk.
Due to the risks and costs of CT scans, Lieberman added, only about 1.6 million of the 94 million Americans at risk for lung cancer — as estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — are scanned each year. “A cheaper, safer screening device can be applied to a much larger percentage of that population,” he said.
The L CARD (which stands for Chemically Actuated Resonate Device) is essentially a modified near-field communication tag. Certain volatile organic compounds unique to the breath of lung cancer patients modify the tag’s radio frequency identification signal. A smartphone then pings the device and determines, from the modified signal, if those volatile compounds are present.
Kumar said the devices are an order of magnitude (about 10 times) more accurate than CT scans and can be made for less than $1. Astraeus will sell L CARDS directly to hospitals and clinics for use during routine annual checkups, he said. “We’re going after lung cancer,” Kumar said. “The root cause is bad screening: We’ve developed a better screening test, and it’s cost effective.”
Last night’s win was the second for Astraeus in the $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which consists of three independent contests: Pitch, Accelerate, and the Launch grand finale. Astraeus, which formed last November, also won the $10,000 Danny Lewin Grand Prize and the $3,000 Founders.org Audience Choice Prize at the Accelerate competition on Feb. 10.
Going through the competition helped the team focus on all the steps it takes to establish and expand a business, Azzarelli told MIT News. “Going into the $100K — the Launch competition in particular, which is taken so seriously by so many — really forces you to think, ‘If we’re really going to do this, at the level we really want to do it at, how are we going to move forward,’” Azzarelli said.
Big winners
Several additional awards were granted last night to finalist and semifinalist teams: Finalist team Spyce, which developed a tumbler-type machine stocked with raw ingredients that autonomously cooks and serves meals in bowls to customers, won the $5,000 Audience Choice award.
A $10,000 data prize from Booz Allen Hamilton went to semifinalist team ReviveMed, which developed a platform that can be used to repurpose safe but shelved drugs at pharmaceutical firms, for other uses. Two teams split a $10,000 Thomson Reuters Data Prize: finalist team Hive Maritime, which is developing analytics and optimization algorithms for shipping routes and vessel speeds, based on predicted queues at ports and canals; and semifinalist team Swift Calcs, which is creating a cloud-based computational platform for engineers to collaborate on calculations.
Taking home the $15,000 Creative Arts Prize was Tekuma, which developed a service that matches people who want to rent property with artists who create and curate art, and ships the art to the rented space.
Five other finalist teams pitched ideas: AquaFresco developed a water-recycling technology that lets people use one batch of soapy water to clean their laundry for several months; DoneGood is an app that lets people rate businesses based on practices such as being green, supporting diversity, buying locally, and adequately supporting workers, among other causes; Lux Labs created a nanoscale film that selectively filters light to reduce energy consumption on mobile devices and improve efficiency of solar cells; Solugen invented a green, safe, scalable process for producing hydrogen peroxide, which is used for things like semiconductor fabrication, plastic production, and water purification; and ABA Power is making aluminum-based batteries that have 30 times the energy density of traditional lithium batteries and are manufactured with zero emissions.
Since its debut in 1990, the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition has helped launch 160 companies worldwide that have raised an additional $1.3 billion in funding, have a combined market value of $16 billion, and have employed more than 4,600 people.
This year, 160 teams applied to the entrepreneurship competition. That number was winnowed to 50 semifinalist teams for the Launch contest. Judges then chose eight finalists to compete in Wednesday’s grand finale event. Semifinalist teams receive mentoring, prototyping funds, media exposure, and discounted services. |
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