#MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

[biglisbonnews]

Summer 2023 recommended reading from MIT Enjoy these recent titles from Institute faculty and staff. https://news.mit.edu/2023/summer-reading-from-mit-0629

[xtruss]

This Tiny, Tamper-Proof ID Tag Can Authenticate Almost Anything

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Engineers Developed a Tag That Can Reveal with Near-Perfect Accuracy Whether an Item is Real or Fake. The Key is in the Glue on the Back of the Tag.

— Adam Zewe | MIT News | Publication Date: February 18, 2024

A Few Years Ago, MIT Researchers Invented a Cryptographic ID Tag that is several times smaller and significantly cheaper than the traditional radio frequency tags (RFIDs) that are often affixed to products to verify their authenticity.

This tiny tag, which offers improved security over RFIDs, utilizes terahertz waves, which are smaller and travel much faster than radio waves. But this terahertz tag shared a major security vulnerability with traditional RFIDs: A counterfeiter could peel the tag off a genuine item and reattach it to a fake, and the authentication system would be none the wiser.

The researchers have now surmounted this security vulnerability by leveraging terahertz waves to develop an antitampering ID tag that still offers the benefits of being tiny, cheap, and secure.

They mix microscopic metal particles into the glue that sticks the tag to an object, and then use terahertz waves to detect the unique pattern those particles form on the item’s surface. Akin to a fingerprint, this random glue pattern is used to authenticate the item, explains Eunseok Lee, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and lead author of a paper on the antitampering tag.

“These metal particles are essentially like mirrors for terahertz waves. If I spread a bunch of mirror pieces onto a surface and then shine light on that, depending on the orientation, size, and location of those mirrors, I would get a different reflected pattern. But if you peel the chip off and reattach it, you destroy that pattern,” adds Ruonan Han, an associate professor in EECS, who leads the Terahertz Integrated Electronics Group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics.

The researchers produced a light-powered antitampering tag that is about 4 square millimeters in size. They also demonstrated a machine-learning model that helps detect tampering by identifying similar glue pattern fingerprints with more than 99 percent accuracy.

Because the terahertz tag is so cheap to produce, it could be implemented throughout a massive supply chain. And its tiny size enables the tag to attach to items too small for traditional RFIDs, such as certain medical devices.

The paper, which will be presented at the IEEE Solid State Circuits Conference, is a collaboration between Han’s group and the Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group of Anantha P. Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of the MIT School of Engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of EECS. Co-authors include EECS graduate students Xibi Chen, Maitryi Ashok, and Jaeyeon Won.

Preventing Tampering

This research project was partly inspired by Han’s favorite car wash. The business stuck an RFID tag onto his windshield to authenticate his car wash membership. For added security, the tag was made from fragile paper so it would be destroyed if a less-than-honest customer tried to peel it off and stick it on a different windshield.

But that is not a terribly reliable way to prevent tampering. For instance, someone could use a solution to dissolve the glue and safely remove the fragile tag.

Rather than authenticating the tag, a better security solution is to authenticate the item itself, Han says. To achieve this, the researchers targeted the glue at the interface between the tag and the item’s surface.

Their antitampering tag contains a series of miniscule slots that enable terahertz waves to pass through the tag and strike microscopic metal particles that have been mixed into the glue.

Terahertz waves are small enough to detect the particles, whereas larger radio waves would not have enough sensitivity to see them. Also, using terahertz waves with a 1-millimeter wavelength allowed the researchers to make a chip that does not need a larger, off-chip antenna.

After passing through the tag and striking the object’s surface, terahertz waves are reflected, or backscattered, to a receiver for authentication. How those waves are backscattered depends on the distribution of metal particles that reflect them.

The researchers put multiple slots onto the chip so waves can strike different points on the object’s surface, capturing more information on the random distribution of particles.

“These responses are impossible to duplicate, as long as the glue interface is destroyed by a counterfeiter,” Han says.

A vendor would take an initial reading of the antitampering tag once it was stuck onto an item, and then store those data in the cloud, using them later for verification.

AI For Authentication

But when it came time to test the antitampering tag, Lee ran into a problem: It was very difficult and time-consuming to take precise enough measurements to determine whether two glue patterns are a match.

He reached out to a friend in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and together they tackled the problem using AI. They trained a machine-learning model that could compare glue patterns and calculate their similarity with more than 99 percent accuracy.

“One drawback is that we had a limited data sample for this demonstration, but we could improve the neural network in the future if a large number of these tags were deployed in a supply chain, giving us a lot more data samples,” Lee says.

The authentication system is also limited by the fact that terahertz waves suffer from high levels of loss during transmission, so the sensor can only be about 4 centimeters from the tag to get an accurate reading. This distance wouldn’t be an issue for an application like barcode scanning, but it would be too short for some potential uses, such as in an automated highway toll booth. Also, the angle between the sensor and tag needs to be less than 10 degrees or the terahertz signal will degrade too much.

They plan to address these limitations in future work, and hope to inspire other researchers to be more optimistic about what can be accomplished with terahertz waves, despite the many technical challenges, says Han.

“One thing we really want to show here is that the application of the terahertz spectrum can go well beyond broadband wireless. In this case, you can use terahertz for ID, security, and authentication. There are a lot of possibilities out there,” he adds.

This work is supported, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies.

[jcmarchi]

The tenured engineers of 2024

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-tenured-engineers-of-2024/

The tenured engineers of 2024

In 2024, MIT granted tenure to 11 faculty members across the School of Engineering. This year’s tenured engineers hold appointments in the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS, which reports jointly to the School of Engineering and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing), Mechanical Engineering, and Nuclear Science and Engineering.

“My heartfelt congratulations to the 11 engineering faculty members on receiving tenure. These faculty have already made a lasting impact in the School of Engineering through both advances in their field and their dedication as educators and mentors,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

This year’s newly tenured engineering faculty include:

Adam Belay, associate professor of computer science and principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), works on operating systems, runtime systems, and distributed systems. He is particularly interested in developing practical methods for microsecond-scale computing and cloud resource management, with many applications relating to performance and computing efficiency within large data centers.

Irmgard Bischofberger, Class of 1942 Career Development Professor and associate professor of mechanical engineering, is an expert in the mechanisms of pattern formation and instabilities in complex fluids. Her research reveals new insights into classical understanding of instabilities and has wide relevance to physical systems and industrial processes. Further, she is dedicated to science communication and generates exquisite visualizations of complex fluidic phenomena from her research.

Matteo Bucci serves as the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor of nuclear science and engineering. His research group studies two-phase heat transfer mechanisms in nuclear reactors and space systems, develops high-resolution, nonintrusive diagnostics and surface engineering techniques to enhance two-phase heat transfer, and creates machine-learning tools to accelerate data analysis and conduct autonomous heat transfer experiments.

Luca Carlone, the Boeing Career Development Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics, is head of the Sensing, Perception, Autonomy, and Robot Kinetics Laboratory and principal investigator at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. His research focuses on the cutting edge of robotics and autonomous systems research, with a particular interest in designing certifiable perception algorithms for high-integrity autonomous systems and developing algorithms and systems for real-time 3D scene understanding on mobile robotics platforms operating in the real world.

Manya Ghobadi, associate professor of computer science and principal investigator at CSAIL, builds efficient network infrastructures that optimize resource use, energy consumption, and availability of large-scale systems. She is a leading expert in networks with reconfigurable physical layers, and many of the ideas she has helped develop are part of real-world systems.

Zachary (Zach) Hartwig serves as the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, with a co-appointment at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. His current research focuses on the development of high-field superconducting magnet technologies for fusion energy and accelerated irradiation methods for fusion materials using ion beams. He is a co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a private company commercializing fusion energy.

Admir Masic, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, focuses on bridging the gap between ancient wisdom and modern material technologies. He applies his expertise in the fields of in situ and operando spectroscopic techniques to develop sustainable materials for construction, energy, and the environment.

Stefanie Mueller is the TIBCO Career Development Professor in the Department of EECS. Mueller has a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is a principal investigator at CSAIL. She develops novel hardware and software systems that give objects new capabilities. Among other applications, her lab creates health sensing devices and electronic sensing devices for curved surfaces; embedded sensors; fabrication techniques that enable objects to be trackable via invisible marker; and objects with reprogrammable and interactive appearances.

Koroush Shirvan serves as the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. He specializes in the development and assessment of advanced nuclear reactor technology. He is currently focused on accelerating innovations in nuclear fuels, reactor design, and small modular reactors to improve the sustainability of current and next-generation power plants. His approach combines multiple scales, physics and disciplines to realize innovative solutions in the highly regulated nuclear energy sector.

Julian Shun, associate professor of computer science and principal investigator at CSAIL, focuses on the theory and practice of parallel and high-performance computing. He is interested in designing algorithms that are efficient in both theory and practice, as well as high-level frameworks that make it easier for programmers to write efficient parallel code. His research has focused on designing solutions for graphs, spatial data, and dynamic problems.

Zachary P. Smith, Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor and associate professor of chemical engineering, focuses on the molecular-level design, synthesis, and characterization of polymers and inorganic materials for applications in membrane-based separations, which is a promising aid for the energy industry and the environment, from dissolving olefins found in plastics or rubber, to capturing smokestack carbon dioxide emissions. He is a co-founder and chief scientist of Osmoses, a startup aiming to commercialize membrane technology for industrial gas separations.

[sunaleisocial]

Marking a milestone: Dedication ceremony celebrates the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing building

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Marking a milestone: Dedication ceremony celebrates the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing building

The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing recently marked a significant milestone as it celebrated the completion and inauguration of its new building on Vassar Street with a dedication ceremony.

Attended by members of the MIT community, distinguished guests, and supporters, the ceremony provided an opportunity to reflect on the transformative gift that initiated the biggest change to MIT’s institutional structure in over 70 years. The gift, made by Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chair, CEO, and co-founder of Blackstone, one of the world’s largest alternative investment firms, was the foundation for establishing the college.

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MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing Building Dedication

MIT President Sally Kornbluth told the audience that the “success of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is a testament to Steve’s vision.” She pointed out that the new building — with capacity for 50 computing research groups — will foster a remarkable confluence of knowledge and cross-pollination of ideas. “The college will help MIT direct this expertise towards the biggest challenges humanity now faces,” she added, “from the health of our species and our planet to the social, economic, and ethical implications of new technologies.”

Expressing gratitude for the chance to engage with MIT, Schwarzman remarked, “You don’t get many opportunities in life to participate in some minor way to change the course of one of the great technologies that’s going to impact people.”

Schwarzman said that his motivation for supporting the college stemmed in part from trips he had taken to China, where he witnessed increased investment in artificial intelligence. He became concerned that he didn’t see the same level of development in the United States and wanted to ensure that the country would be at the leading edge of AI. He also spoke about the importance of advancing AI while prioritizing ethical considerations to mitigate potential risks.

He described his involvement with the college as “the most marvelous adventure” and shared how much he has enjoyed “meeting the fascinating people at MIT and learning about what you do here and the way you think.” He added: “You’re really making enormous changes for the benefit of society.”

Reflecting on the thought process during his tenure that culminated in the conceptualization of the college, MIT President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif recounted the conversations he had about the idea with Schwarzman, whom he called a “perfect partner.” He detailed their collaborative efforts to transform the vision into tangible reality and emphasized how Schwarzman has “an amazing ability to look at what appears to be a hopelessly complex situation and distill it to its essence quickly.”

After almost a year of engaging in discussions with Schwarzman as well as with members of MIT’s leadership and faculty, the Institute announced the formation of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing in October 2018.

To honor Schwarzman’s pivotal role in envisioning the college, Reif presented him with two gifts: A sketch of the early building concept by the architects and a photograph of the building lobby captured shortly after it opened in late January. “Thank you, Steve, for making all of this possible,” Reif said.

Appointed the inaugural dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing in 2019, Dan Huttenlocher, who is also the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, opened the festivities and spoke about the building as a physical manifestation of the college’s three-fold mission: to advance the forefront of computing with fields across MIT; fortify core computer science and artificial intelligence leadership; and advance social, ethical, and policy dimensions of computing.

He also conveyed his appreciation to all those who spent countless hours on the planning, design, and construction of Building 45, including key partners in MIT Campus Construction; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and Suffolk Construction.

“It fills me with immense satisfaction and pride to see the vibrant activity of the MIT students, researchers, faculty, and staff who spend time in this building,” said Huttenlocher. “It’s really amazing to see this building come to life and become a resource for so many across the MIT campus and beyond.”

In addition, Huttenlocher thanked Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of the School of Engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, for his early involvement with the college, and Asu Ozdaglar, deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, for her leadership throughout the college’s development.

[cleverjudge]

A crossroads for computing at MIT | MIT News

On Vassar Street, in the heart of MIT’s campus, the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing recently opened the doors to its new headquarters in Building 45. The building’s central location and welcoming design will help form a new cluster of connectivity at MIT and enable the space to have a multifaceted role.  “The college has a broad mandate for computing across MIT,” says Daniel…

[richdadpoor]

Artificial intelligence for augmentation and productivity

Newsletter Sed ut perspiciatis unde. Subscribe The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing has awarded seed grants to seven projects that are exploring how artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction can be leveraged to enhance modern work spaces to achieve better management and higher productivity. Funded by Andrew W. Houston ’05 and Dropbox Inc., the projects are intended to…

[nithishag]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a glorious private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The establishment of MIT pioneered a brand new era of education that is primarily focused on solving real-world problems. MIT researchers and experts are torchbearers in Artificial Intelligence, Cancer, Climate change, HIV, and several other topics. The invention of magnetic core memory, radars, and the expanding universe concept are some of MIT's exceptional contributions to humanity and the planet. The DSpace@MIT is a digital library for MIT’s research, which has surpassed more than 20 million downloads from people worldwide.  

Founded in 1861, MIT has emerged as an educational hub of the century with more than 11,000 students and 1,000 faculty members. It has a vast campus of 168 acres, including playing fields, gardens, student residences, and publicly cited works of art. The campus is home to 12 museums and galleries, attracting nearly 125,000 visitors each year. MIT welcomes students from 129 countries every year with an acceptance rate of 6.7%. Apart from Technical degrees, MIT also offers several executives and professional programs to enrich the business domain. It is the largest university in the United States by enrollment. The institute has 30 departments across 5 schools and a college - School of Architecture and Planning, School of Engineering, School of Humanities, Arts & Social Science, MIT Sloan School of Management, School of Science, and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.   

According to QS World University rankings, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranks first in the Top 100 universities globally. The students of MIT have always set the bars high by achieving various milestones. Statistics show that 98 Nobel Laureates, 58 National medals of science, 29 medals in Technology and innovations, and 26 Turing Award winners are associated with MIT. The practical teaching-learning methodology at MIT has helped its alumni to launch thousands of active companies, creating millions of job opportunities and contributing to the global economy. Massachusetts Institute of Technology's thought-provoking motto is “Mind and Hand.” 

[technsavi]

Twenty-five ways in which MIT has transformed computing | MIT News

Twenty-five ways in which MIT has transformed computing | MIT News

This month MIT is celebrating the launch of the new $1 billion MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. To help commemorate the event, here’s a list of 25 ways in which MIT has already transformed the world of computing technology. 1937: Digital circuits Master’s student Claude Shannon showed that the principles of true/false logic could be used to represent the on-off states of electric…

[toptrends111]

Blackstone's CEO Donates Billion-Dollar Boost

Blackstone’s CEO, an unexpected advocate, is catalyzing AI progress with a billion-dollar donation for education and research. Stephen Schwarzman's interest ignited during a 2015 encounter with Jack Ma in Beijing, leading to a $350 million gift to MIT's Schwarzman College of Computing. His influence extends globally, with a substantial grant to Oxford University, emphasizing AI ethics. Schwarzman actively champions AI in Washington and finance, reflecting a visionary commitment to transformative technology and its integration within Blackstone.

[softrobotcritics]

What to expect

*Socialized robot helpers in their own bike lanes.  Well, maybe.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, October 22, 2020

Contact: Abby Abazorius, MIT News Office abbya@mit.edu; 617.253.2709

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots”

Book co-authored by Associate Professor Julie Shah and Laura Major SM ’05 explores a future populated with robot helpers.

https://news.mit.edu/2020/expect-when-expecting-robots-1022

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- As Covid-19 has made it necessary for people to keep their distance from each other, robots are stepping in to fill essential roles, such as sanitizing warehouses and hospitals, ferrying test samples to laboratories, and serving as telemedicine avatars.

There are signs that people may be increasingly receptive to robotic help, preferring, at least hypothetically, to be picked up by a self-driving taxi or have their food delivered via robot, to reduce their risk of catching the virus.

As more intelligent, independent machines make their way into the public sphere, engineers Julie Shah and Laura Major are urging designers to rethink not just how robots fit in with society, but also how society can change to accommodate these new, “working” robots.

Shah is an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT and the associate dean of social and ethical responsibilities of computing in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Major SM ’05 is CTO of Motional, a self-driving car venture supported by automotive companies Hyundai and Aptiv. Together, they have written a new book, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration,” published this month by Basic Books.

What we can expect, they write, is that robots of the future will no longer work for us, but with us. They will be less like tools, programmed to carry out specific tasks in controlled environments, as factory automatons and domestic Roombas have been, and more like partners, interacting with and working among people in the more complex and chaotic real world. As such, Shah and Major say that robots and humans will have to establish a mutual understanding.

“Part of the book is about designing robotic systems that think more like people, and that can understand the very subtle social signals that we provide to each other, that make our world work,” Shah says. “But equal emphasis in the book is on how we have to structure the way we live our lives, from our crosswalks to our social norms, so that robots can more effectively live in our world.”

Getting to know you

As robots increasingly enter public spaces, they may do so safely if they have a better understanding of human and social behavior.

Consider a package delivery robot on a busy sidewalk: The robot may be programmed to give a standard berth to obstacles in its path, such as traffic cones and lampposts. But what if the robot is coming upon a person wheeling a stroller while balancing a cup of coffee? A human passerby would read the social cues and perhaps step to the side to let the stroller by. Could a robot pick up the same subtle signals to change course accordingly?

Shah believes the answer is yes. As head of the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT, she is developing tools to help robots understand and predict human behavior, such as where people move, what they do, and who they interact with in physical spaces. She’s implemented these tools in robots that can recognize and collaborate with humans in environments such as the factory floor and the hospital ward. She is hoping that robots trained to read social cues can more safely be deployed in more unstructured public spaces.

Major, meanwhile, has been helping to make robots, and specifically self-driving cars, work safely and reliably in the real world, beyond the controlled, gated environments where most driverless cars operate today. About a year ago, she and Shah met for the first time, at a robotics conference.

“We were working in parallel universes, me in industry, and Julie in academia, each trying to galvanize understanding for the need to accommodate machines and robots,” Major recalls.

From that first meeting, the seeds for their new book began quickly to sprout.

A cyborg city

In their book, the engineers describe ways that robots and automated systems can perceive and work with humans — but also ways in which our environment and infrastructure can change to accommodate robots.

A cyborg-friendly city, engineered to manage and direct robots, could avoid scenarios such as the one that played out in San Francisco in 2017. Residents there were seeing an uptick in delivery robots deployed by local technology startups. The robots were causing congestion on city sidewalks and were an unexpected hazard to seniors with disabilities. Lawmakers ultimately enforced strict regulations on the number of delivery robots allowed in the city — a move that improved safety, but potentially at the expense of innovation.

If in the near future there are to be multiple robots sharing a sidewalk with humans at any given time, Shah and Major propose that cities might consider installing dedicated robot lanes, similar to bike lanes, to avoid accidents between robots and humans. The engineers also envision a system to organize robots in public spaces, similar to the way airplanes keep track of each other in flight.

In 1965, the Federal Aviation Agency was created, partly in response to a catastrophic crash between two planes flying through a cloud over the Grand Canyon. Prior to that crash, airplanes were virtually free to fly where they pleased. The FAA began organizing airplanes in the sky through innovations like the traffic collision avoidance system, or TCAS — a system onboard most planes today, that detects other planes outfitted with a universal transponder. TCAS alerts the pilot of nearby planes, and automatically charts a path, independent of ground control, for the plane to take in order to avoid a collision.

Similarly, Shah and Major say that robots in public spaces could be designed with a sort of universal sensor that enables them to see and communicate with each other, regardless of their software platform or manufacturer. This way, they might stay clear of certain areas, avoiding potential accidents and congestion, if they sense robots nearby.

“There could also be transponders for people that broadcast to robots,” Shah says. “For instance, crossing guards could use batons that can signal any robot in the vicinity to pause so that it’s safe for children to cross the street.”

Whether we are ready for them or not, the trend is clear: The robots are coming, to our sidewalks, our grocery stores, and our homes. And as the book’s title suggests, preparing for these new additions to society will take some major changes, in our perception of technology, and in our infrastructure.

“It takes a village to raise a child to be a well-adjusted member of society, capable of realizing his or her full potential,” write Shah and Major. “So, too, a robot.”

###

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

Book: “What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots” https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/laura-major/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-robots/9781541699113/

[jcmarchi]

Sam Madden named faculty head of computer science in EECS

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/sam-madden-named-faculty-head-of-computer-science-in-eecs/

Sam Madden named faculty head of computer science in EECS

Sam Madden, the College of Computing Distinguished Professor of Computing at MIT, has been named the new faculty head of computer science in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), effective Aug. 1.

Madden succeeds Arvind, a longtime MIT professor and prolific computer scientist, who passed away in June.

“Sam’s research leadership and commitment to excellence, along with his thoughtful and supportive approach, makes him a natural fit to help lead the department going forward. In light of Arvind’s passing, we are particularly grateful that Sam has agreed to take on this role on such short notice,” says Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

“Sam’s exceptional research contributions in database management systems, coupled with his deep understanding of both academia and industry, make him an excellent fit for faculty head of computer science. The EECS department and broader School of Engineering will greatly benefit from his expertise and passion,” adds Anantha Chandrakasan, chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of engineering, and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Madden joins the leadership of EECS, which jointly reports to the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the School of Engineering. The largest academic department at MIT, EECS was reorganized in 2019 as part of the formation of the college into three overlapping sub-units in electrical engineering (EE), computer science (CS), and artificial intelligence and decision-making (AI+D). The restructuring has enabled each of the three sub-units to concentrate on faculty recruitment, mentoring, promotion, academic programs, and community building in coordination with the others.

“I am delighted that Sam has agreed to step up to take on this important leadership role. His unique combination of academic excellence and forward-looking focus will be invaluable for us,” says Asu Ozdaglar, MathWorks Professor and head of EECS, who also serves as the deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “I am confident that he will offer exceptional leadership in his new role and further strengthen EECS for our students and the MIT community.”

A member of the MIT faculty since 2004, Madden is a professor in EECS and a principal investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He was recognized as the inaugural College of Computing Distinguished Professor of Computing in 2020 for being an outstanding faculty member, leader, and innovator.

Madden’s research interest is in database systems, focusing on database analytics and query processing, ranging from clouds to sensors to modern high-performance server architectures. He co-directs the Data Systems for AI Lab initiative and the Data Systems Group, investigating issues related to systems and algorithms for data focusing on applying new methodologies for processing data, including applying machine learning methods to data systems and engineering data systems for applying machine learning at scale.

He was named one of MIT Technology Review’s “Top 35 Under 35” in 2005 and an ACM Fellow in 2020. He is the recipient of several awards, including an NSF CAREER award, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award, and “test of time” awards from VLDB, SIGMOD, SIGMOBILE, and SenSys. He is also the co-founder and chief scientist at Cambridge Mobile Telematics, which develops technology to make roads safer and drivers better.

[sunaleisocial]

“They can see themselves shaping the world they live in”

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“They can see themselves shaping the world they live in”

During the journey from the suburbs to the city, the tree canopy often dwindles down as skyscrapers rise up. A group of New England Innovation Academy students wondered why that is.

“Our friend Victoria noticed that where we live in Marlborough there are lots of trees in our own backyards. But if you drive just 30 minutes to Boston, there are almost no trees,” said high school junior Ileana Fournier. “We were struck by that duality.”

This inspired Fournier and her classmates Victoria Leeth and Jessie Magenyi to prototype a mobile app that illustrates Massachusetts deforestation trends for Day of AI, a free, hands-on curriculum developed by the MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative, headquartered in the MIT Media Lab and in collaboration with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MIT Open Learning. They were among a group of 20 students from New England Innovation Academy who shared their projects during the 2024 Day of AI global celebration hosted with the Museum of Science.

The Day of AI curriculum introduces K-12 students to artificial intelligence. Now in its third year, Day of AI enables students to improve their communities and collaborate on larger global challenges using AI. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi’s TreeSavers app falls under the Telling Climate Stories with Data module, one of four new climate-change-focused lessons.

“We want you to be able to express yourselves creatively to use AI to solve problems with critical-thinking skills,” Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning, and professor of media arts and sciences, said during this year’s Day of AI global celebration at the Museum of Science. “We want you to have an ethical and responsible way to think about this really powerful, cool, and exciting technology.”

Moving from understanding to action

Day of AI invites students to examine the intersection of AI and various disciplines, such as history, civics, computer science, math, and climate change. With the curriculum available year-round, more than 10,000 educators across 114 countries have brought Day of AI activities to their classrooms and homes.

The curriculum gives students the agency to evaluate local issues and invent meaningful solutions. “We’re thinking about how to create tools that will allow kids to have direct access to data and have a personal connection that intersects with their lived experiences,” Robert Parks, curriculum developer at MIT RAISE, said at the Day of AI global celebration.

Before this year, first-year Jeremie Kwampo said he knew very little about AI. “I was very intrigued,” he said. “I started to experiment with ChatGPT to see how it reacts. How close can I get this to human emotion? What is AI’s knowledge compared to a human’s knowledge?”

In addition to helping students spark an interest in AI literacy, teachers around the world have told MIT RAISE that they want to use data science lessons to engage students in conversations about climate change. Therefore, Day of AI’s new hands-on projects use weather and climate change to show students why it’s important to develop a critical understanding of dataset design and collection when observing the world around them.

“There is a lag between cause and effect in everyday lives,” said Parks. “Our goal is to demystify that, and allow kids to access data so they can see a long view of things.”

Tools like MIT App Inventor — which allows anyone to create a mobile application — help students make sense of what they can learn from data. Fournier, Leeth, and Magenyi programmed TreeSavers in App Inventor to chart regional deforestation rates across Massachusetts, identify ongoing trends through statistical models, and predict environmental impact. The students put that “long view” of climate change into practice when developing TreeSavers’ interactive maps. Users can toggle between Massachusetts’s current tree cover, historical data, and future high-risk areas.

Although AI provides fast answers, it doesn’t necessarily offer equitable solutions, said David Sittenfeld, director of the Center for the Environment at the Museum of Science. The Day of AI curriculum asks students to make decisions on sourcing data, ensuring unbiased data, and thinking responsibly about how findings could be used.

“There’s an ethical concern about tracking people’s data,” said Ethan Jorda, a New England Innovation Academy student. His group used open-source data to program an app that helps users track and reduce their carbon footprint.

Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM Learning at the Museum of Science, believes students are prepared to use AI responsibly to make the world a better place. “They can see themselves shaping the world they live in,” said Cunningham. “Moving through from understanding to action, kids will never look at a bridge or a piece of plastic lying on the ground in the same way again.”

Deepening collaboration on earth and beyond

The 2024 Day of AI speakers emphasized collaborative problem solving at the local, national, and global levels.

“Through different ideas and different perspectives, we’re going to get better solutions,” said Cunningham. “How do we start young enough that every child has a chance to both understand the world around them but also to move toward shaping the future?”

Presenters from MIT, the Museum of Science, and NASA approached this question with a common goal — expanding STEM education to learners of all ages and backgrounds.

“We have been delighted to collaborate with the MIT RAISE team to bring this year’s Day of AI celebration to the Museum of Science,” says Meg Rosenburg, manager of operations at the Museum of Science Centers for Public Science Learning. “This opportunity to highlight the new climate modules for the curriculum not only perfectly aligns with the museum’s goals to focus on climate and active hope throughout our Year of the Earthshot initiative, but it has also allowed us to bring our teams together and grow a relationship that we are very excited to build upon in the future.”

Rachel Connolly, systems integration and analysis lead for NASA’s Science Activation Program, showed the power of collaboration with the example of how human comprehension of Saturn’s appearance has evolved. From Galileo’s early telescope to the Cassini space probe, modern imaging of Saturn represents 400 years of science, technology, and math working together to further knowledge.

“Technologies, and the engineers who built them, advance the questions we’re able to ask and therefore what we’re able to understand,” said Connolly, research scientist at MIT Media Lab.

New England Innovation Academy students saw an opportunity for collaboration a little closer to home. Emmett Buck-Thompson, Jeff Cheng, and Max Hunt envisioned a social media app to connect volunteers with local charities. Their project was inspired by Buck-Thompson’s father’s difficulties finding volunteering opportunities, Hunt’s role as the president of the school’s Community Impact Club, and Cheng’s aspiration to reduce screen time for social media users. Using MIT App Inventor, ​their combined ideas led to a prototype with the potential to make a real-world impact in their community.

The Day of AI curriculum teaches the mechanics of AI, ethical considerations and responsible uses, and interdisciplinary applications for different fields. It also empowers students to become creative problem solvers and engaged citizens in their communities and online. From supporting volunteer efforts to encouraging action for the state’s forests to tackling the global challenge of climate change, today’s students are becoming tomorrow’s leaders with Day of AI.

“We want to empower you to know that this is a tool you can use to make your community better, to help people around you with this technology,” said Breazeal.

Other Day of AI speakers included Tim Ritchie, president of the Museum of Science; Michael Lawrence Evans, program director of the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics; Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab; and Natalie Lao, executive director of the App Inventor Foundation.

[terminalwelocity]

“How many times has the world ended before? Perhaps we are just toiling among its ashes.”

Pavel Chekov came to America from Russia at fifteen years old, accepted into MIT’s inaugural class at the brand new Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Although significantly younger than the other students, Pavel excelled in his studies and distinguished himself amongst the school’s prestigious staff.

It had been hard to leave behind his family—his mother and father, his aunts and uncles, his dozens of cousins, nieces and nephews, all of them precious to him—but he quickly found himself happy. He relished in the chance to learn, to develop his knowledge, to contribute to research.

He was seventeen when the news broke.

With little to no explanation, the borders closed. Travel by land, air and sea was suspended. Curfews were introduced, mysterious safety precautions that were not given context. His mother phoned him, asking what was happening, begging him to be careful. He promised to phone her with answers just as soon as he had them.

Hours later, the communications networks went down.

Hours after that, the army were on the streets.

Still, it was days more before Pavel himself first witnessed what was tearing the country apart from within; the once-human husks, now nothing more than warm vehicles for infection, their minds and their actions no longer their own.

Along with some others of his peers, he buckled down in the college, prepared to wait out the disaster. But when a ragtag band of survivors came through looking for shelter for the night, led by one Jim Kirk, Pavel somehow knew that to be on the move with them would afford a far greater chance of survival. He packed his few things, and come morning, he set off with them.

Now? Now he’s just trying to survive, and to somehow get home.

[aakin55]

Letter regarding the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing working groups and Idea Bank

Letter regarding the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing working groups and Idea Bank

[ad_1]

The following letter was sent to the MIT community on Feb. 7 by Provost Martin A. Schmidt.

To the members of the MIT community:

In October 2018, MIT announced the establishment of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. The College aims to create a shared academic structure to facilitate the connection of computing scholarship and resources to all disciplines at MIT, and to…

[tumsozluk]

MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Announces Break Through Tech AI MIT News

MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Announces Break Through Tech AI MIT News

MIT Stephen A. Schwartzman College of Computing is launched to promote diversity and inclusion in artificial intelligence. Breakthrough Tech AIis a new program to bridge the talent gap between women and underrepresented genders in AI positions in the industry. Break Through Tech AI provides skill-based training, industry-relevant portfolios, and mentorship to qualified undergraduates in the…

[blackholerobots]

Our Human Future in an Age of Artificial Intelligence