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MIT Deshpande Center announces Fall 2012 research grants

December 4th, 2012

The Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT today announced it is awarding $706,000 in grants to ten MIT research teams currently working on early-stage technologies. These projects have the potential to make a significant impact on our quality of life in cancer treatment, computation, arthritis, recovery from cataract surgery, semiconductor manufacture, image processing, retinal disease detection, food production and distribution.

The Deshpande Center, acting as a catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship, awards grants that fund proof-of-concept explorations and validation for emerging technologies. "These projects are great examples of the exciting research at MIT. Each of them has the potential to significantly benefit to peoples' lives," says Ian A. Waitz, dean of the School of Engineering. "From healthcare, to big data, to semiconductors, to the food industry—the Deshpande Center increases the impact of MIT's researchers by accelerating the movement of their work out of the lab and into practical solutions that benefit society."

The fall 2012 grant recipients are:

  • Novel Oral Mucosa Drug Delivery Project: Jane-Jane Chen and Manijeh Goldberg with Kuan Chen, Sonya Goldberg, Marcela Linares, Chovi Nazaire, Kamal Sandhu, Josh Santos, Keeon Tabrizi, and Warren Whyte
  • The current treatment of oral cancer is to intravenously administer a highly toxic chemotherapy drug with systemic side effects. This project is developing a novel oral delivery of the drug, which can significantly reduce the side effects while allowing for a more effective cancer treatment.
  • Enabling Big Computation on Big Data for Business Analysts and Scientists: Alan Edelman with Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, and Viral Shah
  • As more and more data is generated, the analysis of the data becomes daunting and requires complex tools and programming. This project is developing a high level programming language for the analysis of big data.
  • Drug Delivery System for Treating Osteoarthritis: Alan Grodzinsky and Chris Evans with Moungi Bawendi, Ambika Goel, Rohit Karnik, and Cliff Wong
  • Joint trauma can injure cartilage and lead to osteoarthritis within 10 to 15 years. Treating the joint and cartilage immediately after the injury could prevent long-term damage and arthritis. This project is developing a drug delivery system for the treatment of injured joints to prevent arthritis.
  • Medication Dispensing Intraocular Lens (mdIOL) for Cataract Surgery: Paula Hammond and Kenneth Mandell with Myoung-Hwan Park, and Joseph Rizzo
  • Cataract surgery patients need to administer medication, using eye drops, for several weeks after a new lens is implanted. This project is developing a technology to release drugs directly from the implanted lens using a new nano layer technology, thus eliminating the need for eye drops.
  • Stable Carbenes As General Surface Anchors: Jeremiah Johnson with Longyan Liao, Michael Mavros, Troy Van Voorhis, James Whitten, Huaxing Zhou, and Aleksandr Zhukhovitskiy
  • When manufacturing semiconductor devices it is necessary to attach various materials to a surface layer. This project is developing a new methodology for attaching materials to surfaces using carbene molecules.
  • Ensemble-based Processing of Noisy Images: Dennis McLaughlin with Rafal Wojcik
  • Many imaging systems used in geology, medicine and industry provide images that are "noisy" and imprecise. This project will allow useful information to be extracted from the noisy images to help detect features that would otherwise be hidden.
  • RetiCue: Portable Device for Retinal Imaging: Ramesh Raskar with Everett Lawson, Rajesh Nair, Karin Roesch, and Gordon Wetzstein
  • Early detection of diabetic retinopathy allows treatment that can prevent blindness. The high cost of retinal imaging devices and the expertise required to use them makes early detection unavailable to millions around the word.
  • Sensors for Food and Agriculture: Selectivity for Key Markers and the Development of Scalable Manufacture: Tim Swager with Joe Azzarelli, Brendon Deveney, Kelvin Frazier, Katherine Mirica, and Jan Schnorr
  • Gases emitted by plants indicate the ripeness of produce. An inexpensive low power gas sensor would improve the economics by optimizing the harvest, storage, transportation and distribution of food. This project will develop a low cost sensor designed for this market.

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citation: MIT Deshpande Center announces Fall 2012 research grants (2012, December 4) retrieved 3 August 2026 from https://sciencex.com/wire-news/116083687/mit-deshpande-center-announces-fall-2012-research-grants.html
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