MIT Media Lab

Watch: With a new surgical intervention and a prosthesis that is fully driven by the user’s own nervous system, patients with amputations below the knee demonstrated a more natural walking gait and improved sense of control over the prosthetic limb. They also walked faster, avoided obstacles more easily, and climbed stairs more naturally than people with a traditional amputation, while reporting less pain and muscular atrophy. The study was conducted by researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and published in Nature Medicine (Nature Portfolio). Learn more: https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/full-neural-control-of-a-bionic-limb-to-restore-biomimetic-gait-after-amputation/overview/ or link in profile. Note: Video has no spoken audio.

Congratulations to Professor Danielle Wood, who leads the Space Enabled research group at the Media Lab (@space.enabled ), on being selected for the third Just Tech Fellowship cohort! As part of this fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (@ssrc_org ), Professor Wood will lead projects that apply satellite Earth Observation technology for environmental management in cooperation with leaders from Africa and Native American Tribes. Learn more: https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/danielle-wood-named-2024-just-tech-fellow/ Headshot courtesy of Danielle Wood

Congratulations to Professor Deblina Sarkar (@deblinasarkar59 ), head of the Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek (@ncb_mit ) group at the Media Lab, on receiving a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (@nsfgov )! This award will support her work building a new paradigm for brain implants with high potential for treating brain diseases. Learn more: https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/prof-deblina-sarkar-receives-prestigious-nsf-early-career-award/ or link in profile Headshot by Jimmy Day (@jimbodays )

In Nature Medicine (@nature.portfolio ), researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (@brighamandwomens ) report that patients who received a novel surgical procedure, the agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI), were able to achieve a natural gait with a prosthetic leg driven by the body’s own nervous system. Media Lab Professor Hugh Herr, senior author of the study, says: “This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation, where a biomimetic gait emerges. No one has been able to show this level of brain control that produces a natural gait, where the human’s nervous system is controlling the movement, not a robotic control algorithm.” Learn more in MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2024/prosthesis-helps-people-with-amputation-walk-naturally-0701 or link in profile. Image: Courtesy of Prof. Hugh Herr and Hyungeun Song

Congratulations to the 2024 LEGO Papert Fellows, Kayla Briët (@kaylabriet ), Ila Kumar, and Ana Schon (@ana.schon )! Mitchel Resnick (@mresmres ), LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, says, "Seymour Papert’s ideas have had a profound impact on learning and education projects at the Media Lab — and around the world! It’s great to welcome a new set of LEGO Papert Fellows who are building on Seymour’s ideas." Ole Kjær Thomasen, Design Specialist at The LEGO Foundation (@thelegofoundation ), adds, “This year’s fellows are making significant contributions with their unique voices to the symphony of youth protagonism. They are weaving together a melody that echoes the diverse voices and perspectives of our future, and it is a pleasure to support and amplify the work of these rising leaders.” Learn more about the LEGO Papert Fellows and their work! /mit-media-lab/meet-the-2024-lego-papert-fellows-98c20fb1f35c or link in profile. Clockwise from top: Ila Kumar. Credit: Jimmy Day (@jimbodays ) Kayla Briët. Credit: Abbey Sacks Ana Schon. Credit: vika brennick (@vikasfotos ) Collage by Olivia Verdugo (@oliviasverdugo )

At the forty-first International Conference on Machine Learning (#ICML2024 ), Media Lab researchers Manuel Cherep (@mcherep ), Nikhil Singh (@nikhildoesntsingh ), and Jessica Shand (@jessica.shand ) will present “Creative Text-to-Audio Generation via Synthesizer Programming,” a text-to-audio generation method using a virtual modular synthesizer. Explore the code! https://ctag.media.mit.edu/ or link in profile. Image: Figure 1 of the CTAG paper, showing spectrograms of auditory outputs corresponding to six text prompts — "spray," "bees buzzing," "police car siren," "machine gun," "train horn," and "chainsaw."

In MIT's new "Space Architecture" course, students designed, prototyped, and tested structures that might one day be used to support human habitation and activities on the moon. "Space Architecture" is an interdisciplinary design class co-presented by the MIT Department of Architecture (@mitsap ), MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (@mitaeroastro ), and the Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative (@explorespace_ml ). Learn more: https://news.mit.edu/2024/designing-outer-space-0623 or link in profile. Images 1) Yiwei Xue steps out of Momo, a semi-permanent in situ habitat designed for space exploration ahead of establishing a permanent base on the moon. Credit: Chenyue “xdd44” Dai 2) The team behind Lunar Sandbags (from left to right): William Du, Kaicheng Zhuang, Daniela Davalos, Laura Brandt, and Manushaqe Muco. Credit: Skylar Tibbits/Self-Assembly Lab (@skylartibbits /@selfassemblylab ) 3) Suwan Kim peers into the Inflatable Lunar Habitat she co-designed for the Space Architecture course. Credit: Skylar Tibbits/Self-Assembly Lab 4) The Inflatable Lunar Habitat team (from left to right): Agnes Parker, Suwan Kim, Celvi Lisy, and Sai Manjokumar. Credit: Maria Iacobo 5) Mateo Fernandez (left) explains the team’s design of Momo at the course’s final presentation while classmates Adam Boldi, Katie Chun, and Chenyue "xdd44" Dai look on. Credit: Maria Iacobo 6) Prototype of Momo demonstrating its ability to pack flat for easy transport. Credit: Maria Iacobo

"Organs without Bodies," by Media Lab PhD student Valdemar Danry (@valleballemis ) and collaborator Cenk Güzeliş (@cenkguzelis ), invites audiences to consider the implications of using generative AI and 3D printing to create objects without traditional human labor or design practices. The work is on display at the IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) this week, as part of the conference’s first-ever AI Art Gallery. #CVPR2024 Learn more: /project/organs-without-bodies/ or link in profile. All images courtesy of the artists.

PlatoNeRF, developed by researchers from the Media Lab’s Camera Culture research group and collaborators from @Meta , combines lidar and machine learning to accurately reconstruct 3D geometry, including hidden objects, using a single camera view. “Our key idea was taking these two things that have been done in different disciplines before and pulling them together—multibounce lidar and machine learning,” says lead author Tzofi Klinghoffer, a PhD student at the Media Lab. “It turns out that when you bring these two together, that is when you find a lot of new opportunities to explore and get the best of both worlds.” The system, which is being presented in a paper at the IEEE / CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR) this week, has potential applications in autonomous vehicles, AR/VR, and robotics. In addition to Klinghoffer, the research team included Siddharth Somasundaram and Professor Ramesh Raskar (Media Lab), Xiaoyu Xiang and Christian Richardt (Meta Reality Labs), and Yuchen Fan and Rakesh Ranjan (Meta). #CVPR2024 Learn more in MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2024/researchers-leverage-shadows-model-3d-scenes-blocked-objects-0618 or link in profile. Image: By using shadows to determine what lies in obstructed portions of the scene, PlatoNeRF can accurately model the rabbit in the chair, even though it's is blocked from view. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers, edited by MIT News

Watch: In “Scientific InQueery,” MIT PhD students Jack Forman (@formaj ; Media Lab) and Miranda Dawson (Biological Engineering), with MIT alum Tunahan Aytas (@tunahanaytas ; @mitdmse ), interviewed queer MIT faculty about finding community and living their authentic lives. As co-leads of LGBTQ+ Grad, a student group run by and for LGBTQ+ grad students and postdocs at MIT, the producers created the project to inspire young LBGTQ+ academics to take pride in the intersections of their identities and their academic work. Learn more in MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2024/scientific-inqueery-researchers-discuss-queer-visibility-in-academia-0613 or link in profile.

Watch: In this 2010 video, William Mitchell, then a Media Lab professor and former dean of the MIT School of Architecture + Planning (@mitsap ), tells the Story of E14—the Media Lab extension designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, who died last week at age 95. See the whole video at https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/fumihiko-maki/ or link in profile

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, who died last week at the age of 95, was known worldwide for designs as diverse as the gleaming tower of 4 World Trade Center and the curving lines of the Fujisawa Municipal Gymnasium. He employed both sharp angles and floating forms for the Media Lab’s Building E14—an extension of the original Media Lab building designed by I.M. Pei. In all of his work, the Washington Post notes, Maki endeavored to discover “the ‘body of wisdom,’ or collective memory, from a site and [translate] that into a design.” At the Media Lab, that “body of wisdom” includes I.M. Pei’s Wiesner Building, which features a cube-shaped lab space surrounded by offices.That design was further developed in Building E14, where two-story lab spaces are encircled by offices that open onto balconies. Maki said that Building E14, which opened in 2010, was intended to help people and ideas circulate. Its glass-enclosed lab spaces and internal courtyards are connected by floating staircases that offer surprising glimpses of the work going on inside. Learn more about E14 and its architect, Fumihiko Maki: B or link in profile. Images: 1) Fumihiko Maki at the MIT Media Lab in 2010. Credit: jeanbaptisteparis 2) Exterior of Building E14. Credit: Andy Ryan 3) Interior of Building E14. Credit: Andy Ryan 4) Sketch of Building E14. Credit: Maki and Associates