Science & Industry | M. Scott Brauer

Postdoctoral Associate Jasdave Chahal (right) and Research Scientist Omar F. Khan are seen here in the Langer Lab at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, on Tues., Nov. 15, 2016. The two worked together to create a programmable RNA vaccine. The two are looking at a microfluidic device used by Khan for mixing and self-assembly of nanoparticle vaccines.

Julie Shah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and leads the Interactive Robotics Group in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. She is seen here with an ABB industrial robot. Shah uses these robots in research on "elbow to elbow" manufacturing, in which humans and robots work side by side in the same area.

Construction workers build a bridge over the Jialing River in Chongqing, China. The river, along with the Yangtze, divides the cities districts, creating substantial traffic bottlenecks on the existing bridges.

Franz-Josef Ulm, seen here in his Building 1 lab, is director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub and a professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Visiting graduate student Moran Neuhof (PhD student at Tel Aviv University) prepares to place planarian flatworms in an experimental apparatus in one of Michael Levin's labs in Tufts University's Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology in Medford, Massachusetts, USA. The worms are placed in this computer-controlled automated learning and testing chamber which allows the training of flatworms in a controlled environment. Levin's research focuses on morphological and behavioral information processing in living systems. Some of the lab's recent experiments have looked at memory in flatworms using this device. A speck of food is placed in one quadrant of a petri dish and that quadrant is illuminated by a blue light. The flatworms seek out that food and retain that memory in subsequent tests even after regenerating most of their bodies.

Riddhi Shah (Research Associate) Independent Activity Period (IAP) Pop-Up Resilient Furniture four-day workshop at the D-Lab workshop in MIT's building N51 in Cambridge, Mass., USA, on Sun., January 20, 2019. The finished furniture pieces were going to be installed in Grove Hall in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

Graduate student Laura Popa (pictured) and Associate Professor Dana Weinstein have developed a Gallium Nitride Millimeter Wave Integrade Circuit (MMIC) in the Microsystems Technology Laboratories in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The chip they developed allows fast switching between frequencies in communications technology such as cell phones.

A Lexus 600h L sedan with the TRI Platform 3.0 self-driving technology built into it is being worked on in the Toyota Research Institute Garage near Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, on Tues., Aug. 14, 2018. The vehicle is outfitted with special software and navigation systems including RADAR (black rectangle near top), LIDAR (white and black round piece in middle below black RADAR), and cameras that are part of a computer vision system.

Yuhan Hu, a visiting student from China, works on the Hand Development Kit in the Fluid Interfaces Group lab space at MIT's Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, seen here on Tues., April 25, 2017. The Hand Development Kit is a prosthetic of sorts that allows a user to have additional fingers and may be used in future applications including typing and musical instrument playing.

A frog with an extra working eye on its back (near the top of the left leg) swims in a tank in Dr. Michael Levin's lab at the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology in the Department of Biology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, USA. Researchers caused this extra eye to grow on the frog by taking cells that would become an eye from one frog egg and transplanting it onto cells that would become a frog's back in another egg. The donor egg developed two eyes normally, and the recipient egg developed two normal eyes and the third, all of which function as normal eyes would in a frog. This frog was born in August 2011 and continues to live as normal as of May 2014. Levin's research focuses on the way that animal cells communicate with one another during embryonic development and cell and tissue regeneration. Levin's lab currently uses frogs and freshwater planaria worms for research.

The ion Electrospray Propulsion System (iEPS) for CubeSats is made by MIT's Space Propulsion Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The device is used to maneuver a 10cm cubic satellite in space. The Space Propulsion Lab is directed by Dr. Paulo Lozano, professor in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Two Ph.D. candidates working on the project, Natalya Brikner and Louis Perna have formed a company, Accion Systems Incorporated, to commercialize the research. Brikner, graduating in Winter 2014, is CEO of the company, and Perna is co-founder.

Cranes on boats float in the White River in Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia.

A small satellite levitates in a vacuum chamber used to test thruster design in the Space Propulsion Lab at MIT. Paulo Lozano is the Associate Director of the Space Propulsion Lab and an Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Lozano's current research focuses on the development of small thrusters for satellites. The thrusters his lab has developed are about the size of a single die cube and contain enough fuel to power the thrusters for a year in space. The thrusters will be used on small satellites.

A Pro EMS paramedic waits for a printout of patient vitals in an ambulance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The patient had been experiencing shortness of breath, and paramedics administered care in his home and the ambulance before taking him to a hospital. The company analyzes 100% of their calls, even if the patient refuses care. After a call, the paramedics and EMTs record all data about the call, including patient demographic information, medicine and care administered, and a narrative of their entire response to the emergency call. This data is used by hospitals to inform their care of the patient and by Pro EMS to assess the quality of their care and also provide data for predictive models they use to place ambulances throughout the company's service area. The data may also be used if information about the call will be used in court or insurance investigations.

Keith Kennedy works in the call center of New England Organ Bank, an organ procurement organization based in Waltham, Massachusetts, serving the greater New England area. Federal regulations require that all deaths are reported to the local organ procurement organization. This call center fields these reports for most of the New England area, averaging over 30,000 deaths referred and processed through this call center per year.

Plants used in Harpreet Sareen's Cyborg Botany project grow in the Fluid Interfaces Group lab space at MIT's Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, seen here on Tues., April 25, 2017. Sareen is a grad student and research assistant in the Fluid Interfaces Group, led by Pattie Maes. The project embeds electronics and sensors in living plants that can, among other possibilities, detect soil or water impurities. The plants at right will be attached to computerized growing platforms (the circles above the plants) that Sareen will use to force the plants to grow in specific ways, such as in a spiral pattern. At left is a rose bush, the cuttings from which are embedded with electronics in Sareen's experiments.

Matt Launsby (left), 20, and Comfort Mainza, 22, weigh crates of sorted live lobsters at Island Seafood's receiving facility before sending them to the packing facility in Eliot, Maine, USA, on Wed., Jan. 31, 2018. Lobsters are sorted into similar sizes and then moved to a packing facility to be shipped to customers around the world.

A press technician checks the quality of pages coming off of a press in the Amity Printing Company's new printing facility in Nanjing, China....On May 18, 2008, the Amity Printing Company in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, inaugurated its new printing facility in southern Nanjing. The facility doubles the printing capacity of the company, now up to 12 million Bibles produced in a year, making Amity Printing Company the largest producer of Bibles in the world. The company, in cooperation with the international organization the United Bible Societies, produces Bibles for both domestic Chinese use and international distribution. The company's Bibles are printed in Chinese and many other languages. Within China, the Bibles are distributed both to registered and unregistered Christians who worship in illegal "house churches."

A worker cleans the floor of a "dry room" on the first floor of the new SBLiMotive plant in Ulsan, South Korea. The plant broke ground in 2009 and is currently undergoing testing before full production is expected to begin in late 2010. The plant, a joint venture between Bosch and Samsung, will produce batteries for cars.