mendit research lab

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Clothing Repair Practices: Cultural Understanding. Roundtable discussion with Mendit Research Lab

• Kucher, I. (Panel member)
• Design School Kolding
• Design for Planet - LAB for Sustainability and Design

Activity : Talk or presentation › Lecture and oral contribution

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Mending methods.

Project : PhD project

Repair and Society Liudmila Aliabieva

• NOV 18, 2023

Mending Matters!

Jo Turney is a Professor and the Doctoral Programmes Director at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. She researches everyday fashion, dress and textile practices. She is the author of The Culture of Knitting addressing knitting as art, craft, design, fashion and performance, and as an aspect of the everyday. She is the founder and editor of Clothing Cultures journal. Her current research considers the 1970s domestic interior in the UK and US, and discusses the blurring of boundaries between home and state through notions of 'freedon', consumption practices, interior design and the adoption of a neo-liberal project.

• NOV 2, 2023

The Performances of Mending

In this episode we meet with Emmeline de Mooij and Margreet Sweerts, founders of the Feminist Needlework Party (Feministische Handwerk Partij, FHP), a political feminist artists’ movement that focuses on studying, repairing, speaking, patching up, unlearning and mending. The FHP organizes performative actions and workshops with which it investigates the underexposed history of textile production within the daily reality of women and wants to achieve a higher appreciation of care, maintenance and repair.

• OCT 27, 2023

Kate Sekules is a writer, historian, teacher, and lifelong mender. Kate is a professor of fashion history at Pratt Institute, she also teaches her class "Mending Fashion" at Parsons NYC. Her book "MEND! A Refashioning Manual and Manifesto" was published by Penguin in 2020. Kate is currently completing her PhD dissertation 'A History and Theory of Mending' at Bard Graduate Center, New York, after which she will in her own words 'have actually earned the title Dr Mend—my alter ego who dispenses mendication Rx in clothes surgeries'.

• OCT 10, 2023

Mending as a craft

Bridget Harvey is a maker who investigates process, occupying a fluid space between craft and design, making and remaking. In her work she embraces interdisciplinarity, using found objects and materials like fired ceramics, wood, and textiles. Through the artefacts she examines ideas like pace, repetition, and playfulness. Since 2013 she has been focused on repair within multiple disciplines, and as independent practice. Bridget did her practice-based PhD 'Repair-Making: Craft, Narratives, Activism', her selected exhibitions include Repair-Making and the Museum, V&A Museum, 15th - 22nd September 2019, Eternally Yours, Somerset House, 16th June - 25th Sept 2022, Repair Revolution!, Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich, from 31st March 2023.

• OCT 1, 2023

Mending started as a game between me and my grandmother

Iryna Kucher is an Eco-Social designer and a PhD Fellow at Design School Kolding. She is a member of Design for Planet -- LAB for Sustainability and Design. Iryna's PhD project focuses on the study of the slow rhythm of consumption in the field of fashion, addressing its attention to the practices of mending, both traditional and new. It analyses the meaning of these practices in Western and Eastern societies in the past and future.

• SEP 21, 2023

Top Podcasts In Education

Scientists propose a new way to search for dark matter

In a new study, SLAC researchers suggest a small-scale solution could be the key to solving a large-scale mystery.

By Kimberly Hickok

Ever since its discovery, dark matter has remained invisible to scientists, despite the launch of multiple ultra-sensitive particle detector experiments around the world over several decades. 

Now, physicists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are proposing a new way to look for dark matter using quantum devices, which might be naturally tuned to detect what researchers call thermalized dark matter.

Most dark matter experiments hunt for galactic dark matter, which rockets into Earth directly from space, but another kind might have been hanging around Earth for years, said SLAC physicist Rebecca Leane, who was an author on the new study. 

“Dark matter goes into the Earth, bounces around a lot, and eventually just gets trapped by the gravitational field of the Earth,” Leane said, bringing it into an equilibrium scientists refer to as thermalized. Over time, this thermalized dark matter builds up to a higher density than the few loose, galactic particles, meaning that it could be more likely to hit a detector. Unfortunately, thermalized dark matter moves much more slowly than galactic dark matter, meaning it would impart far less energy than galactic dark matter – likely too little for traditional detectors to see.

With that in mind, Leane and SLAC postdoctoral fellow Anirban Das reached out to Noah Kurinsky, a staff scientist at SLAC and leader of a new lab focused on detecting dark matter with quantum sensors, who had been thinking about a puzzle: Even when superconductors are cooled to absolute zero, removing all of the energy out of the system and creating a stable quantum state, somehow energy reenters and disrupts the quantum state. 

Typically, scientists assume that's because of imperfect cooling systems or some source of heat in the environment, said Kurinksy. But there could be another reason, he said: “What if we actually have a perfectly cold system, and the reason we can’t cool it down effectively is because it’s constantly being bombarded by dark matter?” 

Das, Kurinsky, and Leane wondered whether superconducting quantum devices could be redesigned as thermalized dark matter detectors. According to their calculations, the minimum energy needed to activate a quantum sensor is low enough – around one thousandth of an electron volt – that it could detect low-energy galactic dark matter as well as thermalized dark matter particles hanging around Earth.

Of course, that doesn't mean that dark matter is to blame for disrupted quantum devices – only that it is possible. The next step, Leane and Kurinsky said, is to figure out if and how they can turn sensitive quantum devices into dark matter detectors. 

With that, there are a few things to consider. For starters, maybe there is a better material to make the device out of. “We were looking at aluminum to start with, and that's just because that's probably the best characterized material that's been used for detectors so far,” said Leane. “But it could turn out that for the sort of mass range we're looking at, and the sort of detector we want to use, maybe there's a better material.”

There’s also a possibility that thermalized dark matter wouldn’t interact with a quantum device the same way galactic dark matter is suspected to interact with direct detection devices, Leane said. “In this study, we were just thinking about a simple case for dark matter coming in and bouncing straight off the detector, but it could do a lot of other things.” For example, other particles could interact with dark matter that change the way the particles in the detector are distributed. 

“This is one of the great things about being at SLAC,” Leane says. “We really have quite a diverse range of groups working on a lot of different science, and I feel like this project is a really nice synergy of the research at SLAC.”

The research was funded by the DOE Office of Science.

Citation: Anirban Das et al., Physical Review Letters , 22 March 2024 ( 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.121801 )

For questions or comments, contact the SLAC Office of Communications at  [email protected] .

SLAC is a vibrant multiprogram laboratory that explores how the universe works at the biggest, smallest and fastest scales and invents powerful tools used by scientists around the globe. With research spanning particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology, materials, chemistry, bio- and energy sciences and scientific computing, we help solve real-world problems and advance the interests of the nation.

SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science . The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Related Topics

• Fundamental physics
• Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology (PAC)
• Science news
• Dark matter
• Particle physics
• Quantum materials
• Quantum physics
• Quantum sensors and detectors

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Can Xerox’s PARC, a Silicon Valley Icon, Find New Life with SRI?

By John Markoff . Photographs by Balazs Gardi. March 26, 2024

Two research labs known for some of the tech industry’s most important innovations have merged in hopes of recapturing their glory days.

It is one of Silicon Valley’s enduring legends.

In 1979, a 24-year old Steve Jobs was permitted to visit Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to view a demonstration of an experimental personal computer called the Alto. Mr. Jobs took away a handful of ideas that would transform the computing world when they became the heart of Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh computers.

Four decades later, PARC has become a footnote in the nation’s technology heartland, even as Silicon Valley’s influence has ballooned. Last April, Xerox quietly donated the lab to SRI International, an independent research laboratory that is a nonprofit organization with an equally storied history that has also fallen from its peak of influence. (The organization shortened its name this year to SRI. It used to be the Stanford Research Institute and was separated from the university in 1970. It changed its name to SRI International in 1977.)

PARC's inventions defined the personal computing revolution, from laser printing to ethernet.

Xerox opens the Palo Alto Research Center as an R&D division on the edge of Stanford’s campus. The mandate of the laboratory is to create “the office of the future.”

Among the first innovations to come out of PARC is a complete system for laser printing, pictured here in a prototype printer model, the Xerox Dover.

PARC creates the Xerox Alto, the first modern personal computer. The Alto features the first graphical user interface, making it possible to control the system by pointing and clicking on menus rather than typing cumbersome commands.

A key part of PARC office of the future vision is a network to tie office systems together. The Ethernet standard is developed at PARC and gradually wins wide industry adoption.

In January, SRI began to disclose its plans for PARC, describing a combined nonprofit research organization, called the Future Concepts division, intent on reclaiming some of the original wizardry that was created when the Xerox Corporation set out to build a basic research laboratory to invent the “office of the future” in 1970.

The PARC laboratory, set in the foothills just south of Stanford, is now largely empty, hosting less than 100 researchers, far from a peak of almost 400. For those who remember its glory days, however, it is a reminder of the research done by a diverse group of scientists and engineers who crossed disciplines and collaborated in a spirit similar to other powerful corporate research centers of that era, such as AT&T’s Bell Laboratories and IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

“It’s still magical,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive and executive chairman, who began his career at PARC as a computer scientist and a member of the research team. He remembers, “an amazing cafeteria, the most incredible view from the roof deck of the Bay Area and very large labs on the ground floor that they once used for physics and semiconductor work.”

Today, however, in an era of tightening corporate budgets and more targeted government spending, basic research largely happens at universities. Silicon Valley has adopted a venture capital-based research funding model focused on quickly bringing products to market — often failing just as promptly.

For reasons that range from the more competitive world of computing research to the fact that the communities that surround the laboratory are now among the most expensive places to live in the world, there are many skeptics about the idea of a rejuvenated PARC. And in a technology region now dominated by venture-funded start-ups, some argue that basic research labs like PARC and SRI are passé.

“PARC is dead,” said Bernardo Huberman, a physicist who was a PARC researcher during the 1970s and 1980s and who now heads a research group at CableLabs, a development organization sponsored by the cable television industry. He added that “the value system that made people feel like they were part of something intellectually by working at PARC has disappeared.”

“Now the culture is more mercenary and focused on money rather than knowledge for its own sake,” Mr. Huberman said.

PARC and SRI share a complicated history. During Silicon Valley’s formative years in the 1960s and ’70s, SRI, which is in neighboring Menlo Park, and PARC invented defining concepts that even today continue to shape the computer industry, including advanced chip design, personal computing, laser printing, office networking and what is described as the Internet of Things.

Some of PARC’s computing innovations have their roots in prior research work done in the SRI lab of Douglas Engelbart, the computer scientist who invented the computer mouse and hypertext, the forerunner to the World Wide Web.

Across its 78-year history, SRI’s inventions have evolved from early computer-based check processing systems to the initial version of Siri.

Bank of America contracts with SRI to design a computer-based system to automate the processing of checks. By 1966, the Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting can process 750 million checks a year.

A robot called Shakey moves about its environment. A variety of innovations will come from it, including advances in computer vision, voice recognition and an algorithm that would become the basis for modern navigation and mapping programs.

The computer scientist Douglas Engelbart does a live demonstration of the “oN-Line system” his team at SRI has been developing, showcasing the computer mouse and hypertext – later to become the foundational concept underlying the World Wide Web.

Two young programmers, Bill Duvall at SRI in Menlo Park and Charley Kline at UCLA in Los Angeles, test remotely connecting to a computer via a Pentagon-funded experimental computer network known as ARPAnet.

Siri, which will eventually be turned into a commercial product by Apple, begins as part of a Pentagon-funded SRI artificial intelligence research effort known as CALO, which stands for Cognitive Assistant That Learns and Organizes.

David Parekh, SRI’s chief executive, said that although PARC could not compete directly for talent because of the high salaries now routinely offered by tech giants, it would still be possible to attract scientists and engineers interested in the research freedom that the laboratory would provide. The new, combined lab will have about 1,000 researchers.

Mr. Parekh, who is a mechanical engineer whose background is in the aerospace industry and who became SRI’s chief executive in 2021, said PARC would be able to attract both early-career researchers as well as mid-career and senior researchers.

He acknowledged that while the reinvented PARC would not have a single “invent the office of the future” style-vision of the original laboratory, it would attempt to make advances in a variety of fields ranging from material science inventions to offset the effects of climate change to quantum computing.

PARC is credited with the original graphical computing breakthrough known as the WIMP interface, an acronym for Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer, that describes a style of human-computer interaction that was popularized by Macintosh and Windows personal computers.

Mr. Parekh said that the stage was now set for a second leap forward in the way humans interacted with computers. That was foreshadowed in basic research done at SRI in the 2000s that led to the commercial spinoff of SIRI, a speech assistant that Mr. Jobs placed at the heart of the iPhone just before his death in 2011.

Mr. Parekh said he believed that the new research center could make major contributions in research on more trustworthy and explainable artificial intelligence systems. SRI has been a pioneer in A.I. research since the 1960s, and Mr. Parekh said that combining today’s neural net technologies with the traditional symbolic A.I. work would pave the way for powerful systems that have the ability to reason.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, he said, is now funding PARC’s research on futuristic human-machine collaboration, intended to make it possible for people and machines to plan and work together on tasks in both digital and physical worlds.

The challenge, said Curtis Carlson, a physicist who was SRI’s chief executive from 1998 to 2014, will be to create a culture that is able to make the connection between invention and innovation, which he described as invention delivered into the marketplace with a viable business model.

PARC’s inventiveness has always been a source of contention. Xerox was accused of “fumbling the future,” by not effectively commercializing the technology it invented to become a major player in the computer industry. Mr. Jobs took away the technology that still defines Apple’s products, and Charles Simonyi, a young PARC software designer who left to work for Microsoft, took the ideas that would become the heart of both Office and Windows.

Xerox executives had always responded that though they did not successfully compete in the computer market, they got a huge return on their investment by commercializing the laser printer technology PARC invented.

But many researchers who were at PARC’s halcyon early days said that its strength was that their research was unconstrained by the need to create a specific product — a notion that seems hard to imagine in today’s product-oriented Silicon Valley.

In the 1970s, PARC was originally thought of as “hippie-ville,” said Jan Vandenbrande, a former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project manager who is now head of research at PARC. That culture, he said, has changed and evolved since then, but has retained a spirit of “how do you make a difference in the world?” and “how do you democratize certain technologies?”

Johan De Kleer, a scientist who spent almost four decades at PARC before leaving recently to found an A.I. software company, said that PARC could be revived only if Mr. Parekh could find a way to build some “slack” into the system by finding money to support open-ended research projects.

SRI may have found that slack. The research laboratory is located in Menlo Park, Calif., in walking distance to the San Francisco to San Jose commuter rail line on 63 of Silicon Valley’s most valuable acres.

Mr. Parekh is now planning to build a modern research campus and residential community with new SRI buildings and space to attract other high-tech companies. The developer will share revenue from the project with SRI.

“This is our annuity for the future for investing in research,” Mr. Parekh said.

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Groundbreaking for new building named for former Sen. Roy Blunt held at Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center

The Roy Blunt Soil Testing and Research Laboratory located in Portageville, Missouri, will strengthen research support for southeast Missouri producers.

April 5, 2024 Contact: Courtney Perrett, 573-882-6217, [email protected] Photo by Shannon Beck

A groundbreaking was held Friday, April 5, for the Roy Blunt Soil Testing and Research Laboratory at the University of Missouri’s Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center (FD-REEC) in Portageville, Mo.

“As a longtime Delta Day attendee and Delta Center advocate, I’m pleased to have been part of spearheading a new facility that will support existing university programs while inspiring research among future generations of students,” former Sen. Blunt said. “It is an honor to have my name connected with this world-class facility right in the heart of the region that will benefit from the research the most.”

This $4.6 million facility will enhance agriculture research programs housed at the center, offering advanced resources for soil, water and plant-tissue testing.

“Senator Roy Blunt's deep roots in agriculture have benefitted our state and our university’s research mission tremendously,” said Keith Holloway, a member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators. “Born into a farming family, Senator Blunt understands the challenges and aspirations of our farming research community like few others. Throughout his career in public service, he consistently championed the cause of agriculture research, advocating for policies that strengthen Missouri’s agricultural industry. This groundbreaking event today is also the day we dedicate the naming of this new research facility in his honor.”

FD-REEC is part of the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Agricultural Experiment Station, which provides locally relevant research and demonstrations to support Missouri’s producers and landowners.

“The Roy Blunt Soil Testing and Research Laboratory brings the latest technologies and research-based recommendations directly for Missouri farmers to use,” said Mun Choi, president of the University of Missouri. “Senator Blunt and the Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center were instrumental in supporting this innovative facility, and it will serve as an enduring example of the strong advocacy for Missouri agriculture.”

Former Sen. Blunt spoke at the event and participated in the ceremonial groundbreaking, in addition to Jason Bean, Missouri senator representing District 25; Chris Chinn, Director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture; Choi; Christopher R. Daubert, vice chancellor and dean, MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources; and Chad Higgins, vice chancellor for extension and UM System chief engagement officer.

“The addition of this laboratory at the Fisher Delta REEC will be crucial to enhancing the quality of research conducted at the center, thus enhancing the agricultural production and profitability of Missouri farmers,” Daubert said.

The new building will offer technologically advanced soil sample and water and plant-tissue testing and provide lab space to house the FD-REEC’s rice production and entomology research programs while accommodating additional greenhouse operations. The testing services to be offered by this new laboratory are currently unavailable in this region of Missouri.

“The significance of this new facility for Missouri's farmers cannot be emphasized enough,” Higgins said. “MU Extension's Soil Testing Program serves as a cornerstone in supporting Missouri farmers by delivering critical insights into soil health and nutrient management. Through its science-backed recommendations, this program annually contributes to savings exceeding $60 million for Missouri farmers, resulting in reduced fertilizer expenses and enhanced crop yields.”

Former Sen. Blunt was integral in bringing together federal, state, and local funding sources to build the new facility.

“I appreciate and respect former Senator Blunt for his hard work and track record of bringing federal dollars back to Missouri,” Bean said. “This investment in our region will enhance the educational programs and research offered by the University of Missouri in support of our farmers and agricultural community.”

Construction on the 6,200-square-foot building will begin this spring.

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• We’re celebrating 10 years of metaverse and AI work at Reality Labs. 
• From our first VR headset to Meta Quest 3 and our latest collection of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, we’re taking a look back at products we’ve built and the research we’ve done on the road to the next computing platform.

“Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming, and we have a chance to build it together,” said Mark Zuckerberg in March 2014. 

It’s now been 10 years since Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of Oculus and began pushing forward his vision of the metaverse in earnest. That’s a decade of investment in Reality Labs, including futuristic research, continuous product development and a whole lot of prototypes.

Today, we’re taking a step back to celebrate a decade of innovation, the people who had faith in this space long before it became mainstream and the community that’s made it all possible.

The Early Days of VR

It all started with a dev kit, a dream and a healthy amount of duct tape. Over 9,000 enthusiasts pledged a combined $2.4 million to help make the dream a reality. The Oculus team transported people from their living rooms to stand on top of a skyscraper and look a Tyrannosaurus rex in the eye — and we were just getting started.

Oculus Rift kicked off the modern VR era in March 2016, followed by our first-generation Touch controllers in December of that year. Touch opened up a new world of possibilities, like scaling a cliff face with your own hands in The Climb and gesturing to cast spells in The Mage’s Tale .

Oculus Go was our first standalone VR product, shipped in 2018. Starting at $199 USD, it offered dramatically improved visual clarity. Oculus Go gave people a front-row seat to concerts, movies and sporting events, while also letting them hang out with friends in ways that wouldn’t be possible with today’s smartphones. 

Oculus Rift S launched in May 2019, incorporating the inside-out tracking technology that eliminated the need for external sensors. We saw the freedom that wireless, standalone headsets could offer, and then went all-in on all-in-one.

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Embarking on an Epic Quest

Then came Quest — the world’s first standalone VR headset — in 2019. For the first time, people could freely explore virtual worlds, no wires required. We welcomed even more people into the fold with Quest 2 . And we let them explore and interact with the virtual world using their own hands, thanks to AI breakthroughs in hand tracking .

We saw technological developments like Passthrough and Air Link in 2021, which lets people stream their PC VR games wirelessly to Quest over WiFi. 

With Quest Pro in October 2022, we introduced the world to compelling mixed reality, complete with eye tracking and Natural Facial Expressions. And just a year later, we introduced Meta Quest 3 , the world’s first mass-market mixed reality headset — letting people around the world seamlessly blend the virtual and physical worlds. From learning piano at your kitchen table to dancing in a virtual Zumba studio or getting a courtside view of NBA games from your couch, Meta Quest 3 transforms your home into a space for endless new experiences.

A Portal Into New Forms of Connection

Portal, Meta’s smart home device, served up information, entertainment and more with a screen and AI-powered Smart Camera to keep people in the frame during video calls. An award-winning playwright used Portal to collaborate with actors and a director from 3,000 miles away. Military families used Portal to stay connected and enjoy Story Time during deployment. And families living across the country used it to spend quality time together during the pandemic. While we’ve since moved on to focus on other products, Portal was a smart home device ahead of its time and one of the first to integrate screens for video calling.

Smart Phones Meet Smart Glasses

In September 2021, we launched Ray-Ban Stories , our first-generation smart glasses produced in partnership with EssilorLuxottica. With open-air audio, they were ideal for listening to music, catching up on podcasts and taking calls on the go. Ray-Ban Stories gave people a new way to capture the moment while staying fully present in it, thanks to hands-free capture of high-quality photos and videos.

In October 2023, we introduced the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses collection . We integrated Meta AI on Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in the US and optimized it for a hands-free experience. By saying “Hey Meta,” people can engage with Meta AI to spark creativity, get information, and control their glasses — just by using their voice. 

And thanks to AI, the glasses will keep getting better and smarter over time. New AI experiences are coming soon including multimodal AI, so the glasses can understand what you’re seeing to provide helpful answers. Let’s say it’s dinnertime and you’re out of ideas. You’ll be able to lay out some ingredients on the counter and ask Meta AI to give you recipe suggestions. Or say you’re traveling and come across a sign in German. You’ll be able to look at the text and ask Meta AI to translate it for you on the fly.

Relentless Research

Reality Labs Research was founded with an understanding of the importance of making big bets on extended time horizons. Our research teams are dedicated to pushing the state of the art forward: from display systems to haptics and beyond. And we regularly publish our work, sharing it with the broader research community so they have an opportunity to extend it.  

Our research and product teams are continuing to explore new areas that could become industry standard in the years to come, including EMG , hyper-realistic Codec Avatars and contextualized AI — all of which we believe will help people seamlessly interact with their devices and each other as the next great paradigm shift in computing takes hold.

And Speaking of AI

This is where our two big bets as a company come together. While Quest 3 offers compelling mixed reality experiences, from fully immersive to those that let you interact with the physical world and digital content in tandem, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses give you access to the utility and entertainment of Meta AI, AR glasses will deliver the best of both worlds as these two technological paths converge.

Just like the smartphone didn’t eliminate the laptop or desktop computer, AR glasses won’t be the end of mixed reality headsets. Rather, we see a constellation of devices forming the fabric of the future. We believe the smart glasses we have now, on the road to full AR glasses, are going to have much broader appeal.

We’re building a new kind of computing platform that will help you better connect with the people and things you care about in a way that’s much more natural and intuitive than what’s possible with today’s 2D screens. That means experiences that help you sync up with friends and family to work, learn, play, shop and create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t easily fit into the mold of how we use computers and smartphones today.

Technology — especially technology that connects people — should be available to as many people as possible. That’s the foundation of what we do, and it’s core to our DNA. Innovation is all about delivering new breakthroughs — and to truly do that, you need to bring those breakthroughs to the masses.

We’re committed to continuing to build out in the open with partners who help pave the way. And we can’t wait to see what the next 10 years have in store.

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Ancestral Storytelling: Movement & Memory embodies motion capture techniques for an interactive and immersive movement and sonic healin…

Theme | Human-AI Collaboration & Decision Making

Advances in machine learning have recently enabled the synthesis of text, images, audio and video data, in what is referred to as Generativ…

Don't Just Tell Me, Ask Me

Critical thinking is an essential human skill. Despite the importance of critical thinking, research reveals that our reasoning ability suf…

Designing Systems for Cognitive Support

Synthetic Visual Sensations: Augmenting Human Spatial Awareness with a Wearable Retinal Electric Stimulation Device

Valdemar Danry, Laura Chicos, Matheus Fonseca, Ishraki Kazi, and Pattie Maes. 2024. Synthetic Visual Sensations: Augmenting Human Spatial Awareness with a Wearable Retinal Electric Stimulation Device. In The Augmented Humans International Conference (AHs 2024), April 4–6, 2024, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3652920.3652932

Guadalajara Mobility Choices

Mobility Choices is used to predict transportation mode choices of students at the University of Guadalajara (UdeG) within the Guadalajara …

AI comes out of the closet: Using AI-Generated Virtual Characters to Help Individuals Practice LGBTQIA+ Advocacy

Pillis, D., Pataranutaporn, P., Maes, P., & Sra, M. (2024). AI comes out of the closet: Using AI-Generated Virtual Characters to Help Individuals Practice LGBTQIA+ Advocacy. In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

Next Week Tonight

Project DescriptionIn an era where news evolves at breakneck speed, Next Week Tonight offers a novel approach to news consumption and proje…

AbstractDespite significant historical progress, discrimination and social stigma continue to impact the lives of LGBTQIA+ individuals. The…

People and intelligent machines in a creative, symbiotic loop

Advancing justice in Earth's complex systems using designs enabled by space

Ufuoma Ovienmhada Publishes Paper on "Perspectives from Anti-Prison Community Organizers on the Uses of Geospatial Data"

Ufuoma Ovienmhada, Ahmed Diongue, and Danielle Wood publish paper on perspectives from anti-prison community organizers on geospatial data.

Guadalajara Mobility Choices Gallery

Photo gallery related to the Guadalajara Mobility Choices project by the City Science Group.

VALIS: 2023 Production

Tod Machover’s first opera (he has now composed many more groundbreaking ones) was VALIS, and it made history when it premiered for the 10t…

Fadel Adib named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum

Fadel Adib has been named a Young Global Leader (YGL)—in the Academia/Think-tank category—by the World Economic Forum. The Forum annou…

An AI opera from 1987 reboots for a new generation

At MIT, Tod Machover’s ‘VALIS’ receives its first staged production in over two decades

Re-imagining the opera of the future

The iconic sci-fi opera VALIS, first composed by Professor Tod Machover in 1987, reboots at MIT for a new generation.

Propelling atomically layered magnets toward green computers

MIT scientists address issues to bringing 2D magnetic materials into practical use, setting the stage for more energy-efficient computers

MIT AI for Filmmaking Hackathon 2024: A Leap Forward in Creative Innovation

The second iteration of this hackathon featured 66 films and 400 participants from local institutions, other states, and countries.

Field-free deterministic switching of all–van der Waals spin-orbit torque system above room temperature

Shivam N. Kajale et al., Field-free deterministic switching of all–van der Waals spin-orbit torque system above room temperature. Sci. Adv. 10, eadk8669(2024). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adk8669

Research At Scale - Jan 2024

A 1-month residency in Shenzhen to scale research with mass manufacturing for affordability or unprecedented magnitudes.

Inventing disruptive technologies for nanoelectronic devices and creating new paradigms for life-machine symbiosis

City Science Network

MIT City Science has developed an international network of cooperative City Science LabsWe are developing concepts and key technology that …

MemPal: Wearable Cognitive Assistant for Aging Population

Elderly individuals with cognitive impairment (e.g., dementia and Alzheimer's disease) have increasing difficulty with prospective memory a…

InExChange: Fostering Genuine Social Connection through Embodied Breath Sharing in Mixed Reality

Morris, C., Liu, P., Riecke, B. E., & Maes, P. (2023). InExChange: Fostering Genuine Social Connection through Embodied Breath Sharing in Mixed Reality. Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article Article 459. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3583917

MIT AI for Filmmaking Hackathon 2023 Brings Dreams to Life

Ruihan Zhang, a student in the Molecular Machines group, was lead organizer of this event in collaboration with MIT Film Makers Association

Beyond the Cradle

Humanizing Agent-Based Models (h - ABM)

Humanizing Agent-Based Models (h-ABM) emerges as a pioneering technique to simulate real-world behaviors, aiming to seamlessly bridge …

CityScope@Guadalajara

Es un sistema de simulación y visualización urbana que permite configurar escenarios de intervenciones y así evaluar las posibles repercusi…

SociaBowl: A Dynamic Table Centerpiece to Mediate Group Conversations

Joanne Leong, Yuehan Wang, Romy Sayah, Stella Rossikopoulou Pappa, Florian Perteneder, Hiroshi Ishii. 2019. SociaBowl: A Dynamic Table Centerpiece to Mediate Group Conversations. In CHI’19 Extended Abstracts, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland Uk. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312775

Experts call for legal ‘safe harbor’ so researchers, journalists and artists can evaluate AI tools

PhD student Shayne Longpre (Human Dynamics) discusses an open letter he co-authored with collaborators.

Autonomous micro-mobility for food deliveries

Could we substitute cars by shared autonomous lightweight vehicles for food delivery? We have developed an agent-based simulation model tha…

Studying the evolution of gene drive systems

How will gene drive systems evolve once released into the wild? Can they be reliably overwritten and blocked by immunizing reversal drives?…

Artificial reef designed by MIT engineers could protect marine life, reduce storm damage

They demonstrate the design in a paper published in PNAS Nexus.

Second round of seed grants awarded to MIT scholars studying the impact and applications of generative AI

A number of Media Lab researchers and alumni are included in the cohort.

Media Lab Community Awards and Recognitions 2024

View recent awards and recognitions received by members of the Media Lab community in the modules here.

TeleSymbiosis

TeleSymbiosis project investigates Human-Nature Interaction through the creation of Sustainable Design Labs and tools for designers

Generative AI for Personalized Learning & Self-Development

Fostering students’ interest in learning has many positive downstream effects. It can make students more persistent and impact student…

AI-Generated Virtual Instructors Based on Liked or Admired People Can Improve Motivation and Foster Positive Emotions for Learning

P. Pataranutaporn* J. Leong*, V. Danry*, A. Lawson, P. Maes, M. Sra. 2022. *Co-first authorship ”AI-Generated Virtual Instructors Based on Liked or Admired People Can Improve Motivation and Foster Positive Emotions for Learning” to appear in FIE 2022, October 8-11, Uppsala, Sweden.

Preserving Sustainability Gains of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of MIT Campus Commuting

Berke, A., Doorley, R., Alfonso, L., & Larson, K. (2022). Preserving Sustainability Gains of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of MIT Campus Commuting. Transportation Research Record. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981221088776

Augmenting Communication & Fostering Social Connection

As computing blends into everyday environments, powerful opportunities open up for social connection. How can we leverage technology to enh…

Wemoji: Towards Designing Complementary Communication Systems in Augmented Reality

This project was produced as part of the   2021 Snap Creative Challenge, focused on "The Future of Co-located Social AR."Wem…

Exploring the Use of Real-Time Camera Filters on Embodiment and Creativity

Leong, Joanne, et al. "Exploring the Use of Real-Time Camera Filters on Embodiment and Creativity." Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2021.

Social Wormholes: Exploring Preferences and Opportunities for Distributed and Physically-Grounded Social Connections

Leong, Joanne, et al. "Social Wormholes: Exploring Preferences and Opportunities for Distributed and Physically-Grounded Social Connections." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 7.CSCW2 (2023): 1-29.

Synthetic Self-Perception

Perceptual illusions have the power to change our abilities and behaviours. Prior research in virtual reality (VR) has shown that transport…

SociaBowl equalizes across the table dialogue

MIT Tangible Media Group’s SociaBowl aims to promote positive social dynamics via a dynamic table centerpiece.

Joanne Leong, Olivia Seow, Cathy Mengying Fang, Benny J. Tang, Rajan Vaish, and Pattie Maes. 2022. Wemoji: Towards Designing Complementary Communication Systems in Augmented Reality. In The Adjunct Publication of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’22 Adjunct), October 29-November 2, 2022, Bend, OR, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages.

Persuasive Electric Vehicle (PEV)

An Alternative Autonomous Revolution System design for emerging urban contexts and societal aspirationsThe Persuasive Electric Vehicle…

Generative AI-Enabled Context Personalization for Vocabulary Learning

Fostering students' interests in learning is considered to have many positive downstream effects. Large language models have opened up new …

The people's place in the city of bits and atoms

Researchers in the Media Lab’s City Science group discuss the role of AI in building cities where humans can thrive.

Theme | Health & Wellbeing

We develop systems that support health and wellbeing, with a special focus on mental health. We design, study and apply technologies s…

Theme | Attention, Memory & Learning

Projects related to the theme of how digital systems may support attention, memory, and learning.

"Picture the Audience" Exploring Private AR Face Filters for Online Public Speaking

This work was presented  at  the ACM CHI 2023 conference. By Joanne Leong, Florian Perteneder, Muhender Raj Rajvee, and…

Bumblebee Data Collection in Puerto Blest, Argentina

In March 2024, we deployed this system alongside National Geographic Explorers and professors Marina Arbetman and Cristian A. Villagra Gil …

Investigating the Use of Synthetic Media and Real-Time Virtual Camera Filters for Supporting Communication and Creativity

Leong, Joanne. Investigating the Use of Synthetic Media and Real-Time Virtual Camera Filters for Supporting Communication and Creativity. 2021. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MS Thesis.

Whispers Of The Mountain

Whispers Of The Mountain is a  sensor system mounted on snow skis.  The system allows for crowdsourcing environmental data of mou…

AI-generated characters for supporting personalized learning and well-being

Pataranutaporn, P., Danry, V., Leong, J. et al. AI-generated characters for supporting personalized learning and well-being. Nat Mach Intell (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-021-00417-9

"Picture the Audience...": Exploring Private AR Face Filters for Online Public Speaking

Joanne Leong, Florian Perteneder, Muhender Raj Rajvee, and Pattie Maes. 2023. “Picture the Audience...”: Exploring Private AR Face Filters for Online Public Speaking. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581039

Using Generative AI to Cultivate Positive Emotions and Mindsets for Self-Development and Learning

Leong, Joanne. "Using Generative AI to Cultivate Positive Emotions and Mindsets for Self-Development and Learning." XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students 29.3 (2023): 52-56.

Reimagining the Opera of the Future

The iconic sci-fi opera VALIS reboots for a new generation

Media Lab research highlighted by MIT News in its wrap-ups of 2023 press coverage

The Media Lab is honored to have had its research and researchers highlighted in two 2023 end-of-year lists prepared by MIT News.

Advancing human wellbeing by developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion

Coupling of EHD Fiber Pumps with Fluidic Artificial Muscles

Revolutionizing the future of fluid-based robotics using charge-injection electrohydrodynamic fiber pumps. This work is in collaboration wi…

• COVID Information
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The MEND Research Clinic is dedicated to helping individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders and their families. We are approaching this goal using a variety of critical research techniques designed to understand causes and to develop effective treatments for many developmental and psychiatric disorders. The MEND Research Clinic is currently working to translate laboratory research findings into novel treatments for children and adults with autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, and major depressive disorder.

The MEND Research Clinic is fortunate to be housed within the immense infrastructure of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which provides us with state-of-the-art clinic space and a wealth of expert investigators.

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Scientist who gene-edited babies is back in lab and ‘proud’ of past work despite jailing

China’s He Jiankui, who used Crispr to edit genome, says he is working on genetic diseases and suggests human embryo gene editing will one day be accepted

A Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for his role in creating the world’s first genetically edited babies says he has returned to his laboratory to work on the treatment of Alzheimer’s and other genetic diseases.

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, He Jiankui said he had resumed research on human embryo genome editing, despite the controversy over the ethics of artificially rewriting genes, which some critics predicted would lead to demand for “designer babies”.

“We will use discarded human embryos and comply with both domestic and international rules,” He told the Mainichi Shimbun, adding that he had no plans to produce more genome-edited babies. Previously, He had used a tool known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite DNA in embryos.

In 2019 a court in China sentenced He to three years in prison for violating medical regulations after he claimed the previous year that he had created genetically modified twin sisters, Lulu and Nana, before birth.

His experiments sent shockwaves through the medical and scientific world. He was widely condemned for having gone ahead with the risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified procedure with inadequate consent from the families involved.

The court found that He had forged documents from an ethics review panel that were used to recruit couples for his research.

He said he had used a gene-editing procedure known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite the DNA in the sisters’ embryos – modifications he claimed would make the children immune to HIV .

He has continued to defend his work, despite widespread criticism, saying he was “proud” of having created Lulu and Nana. A third girl was born in 2019 as a result of similar experiments.

He told the Mainichi that he hoped to use genome editing in human embryos to develop treatments for rare genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and familial Alzheimer’s disease, at three laboratories he has opened since his release from prison in 2022.

He said the three genome-edited children were “perfectly healthy and have no problems with their growth”, according to the newspaper, adding that the twins, now aged 5, were attending kindergarten.

“The results of analysing [the children’s] entire gene sequences show that there were no modifications to the genes other than for the medical objective, providing evidence that genome editing was safe,” he told the Mainichi. “I’m proud to have helped families who wanted healthy children.”

He told the Guardian in 2023 that he had acted “too quickly” by pressing ahead with the procedure, but stopped short of voicing regret or apologising.

In his interview with the Mainichi, he said society would “eventually accept” human embryo gene editing in the quest to find treatments for genetic diseases.

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Navy fires commander of biomedical research lab

The Navy fired the commanding officer of a Lima, Peru, based biomedical research lab on Friday, less than a year after she assumed command.

Capt. Abigail Y. Marter was relieved as head of Naval Medical Research Unit South “due to a loss of confidence in her ability to command,” the Navy said in a statement.

Such boilerplate language is often used by the Navy when first announcing the relief of commanding officers and other senior personnel.

Officials did not immediately respond to follow-up questions from Navy Times regarding the reasons for Marter’s firing.

“Navy commanding officers are held to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct,” the Navy said. “They are expected to uphold the highest standards of responsibility, reliability, and leadership, and the Navy holds them accountable when they fall short of meeting these standards.”

Cmdr. Michael Prouty has assumed temporary command of the unit, and Marter has been temporarily reassigned to Naval Medical Research Command.

A family nurse practitioner, Marter took command of the unit in July.

Formerly known as Naval Medical Research Unit 6, the command monitors and researches infectious diseases in Central and South America.

Its main hub is on a Peruvian naval base, but the command also runs a satellite lab on an air base in Honduras.

Geoff is the editor of Navy Times, but he still loves writing stories. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at [email protected].

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