Spring 2008 Projects (the semester is now complete and these projects are no longer available, but we keep this list here in case you want to learn about some past projects)...

• Power Source for Terahertz Imaging
• Enhanced Wound and Burn Healing
• CD-4 T Lymphocite-Counting Microchip
• High Efficiency Thin Film Solar Cells
• LivesLikeMine
• Indoor Room-Grain Location Discovery
• Endotracheal Tube Placement Sensor
• Siftables
• Antifungal Hydrogels
  

Power Source for Terahertz Imaging

Keith Nelson
Department of Chemistry

Terahertz (THz) imaging has the potential to provide a safe and efficient means of quick screening for explosives at airports and other facilities, and THz spectroscopy can improve imaging for industrial quality control, basic research and other applications. Unlike X-rays, THz waves are non-ionizing and present no risk to people. However, THz screening commercialization has been slowed by the lack of a compact source of high-power THz pulses.

This project is aimed at developing a compact source delivering 100 to 1,000 times more power than other approaches in the marketplace or in R&D. The same source may enable a broad range of ultrahigh-bandwidth THz signal processing applications.

Enhanced Wound and Burn Healing

Ionnis Yannas, Francois Berthiaume
Department of Mechanical Engineering,

Apart from causing deformity and death, wounds and burns severely burden the US healthcare system, costing overall $16-24 billion annually and accounting for five percent of healthcare costs. Skin substitutes have been developed to treat chronic wounds and extensive or deep burns. But their market penetration currently is only five percent, due to their susceptibility to infection and lengthy time for blood-vessel growth.

This project is working with a peptide capable of attracting cells to the wound site to accelerate blood-vessel growth, reduce the risk of infection and dramatically accelerate healing. It is developing novel skin substitutes designed to have wide applications in elective surgery and advanced wound and burn care.

CD-4 T Lymphocite-Counting Microchip

Utkan Demirci
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology

More than 35 million HIV-infected people live in the developing world, where resources are scarce. The World Health Organization has stated that there is an urgent need for a handheld, reliable, low-cost counting device to monitor CD-4 T lymphocytes in patients and deliver immediate results in the field.

This project is developing a low-cost, disposable, point-of-care device utilizing a microchip to analyze a finger-stick blood-drop sample to produce a CD-4 count in less than a minute. Accelerating CD-4 counting in resource-limited settings has the potential to dramatically improve standards of HIV care while reducing costs of treatment. Such a technology would have significant applications in the developed world as well.

High Efficiency Thin Film Si Solar Cells

Anu Agarwal, Jurgen Michel and Lionel C. Kimerling
Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Solar Electricity from silicon is an energy supply industry with a 35% annual growth rate that in 2007 used more silicon material than the $200B integrated circuit industry. Natural abundance, material and intellectual support from silicon electronics, and environmentally benign manufacturing have given silicon solar cells a dominant share (>95%) in the solar electricity market. However, to sustain the industry growth, reliable feedstock supplies, and standard photovoltaic device designs and manufacturing tool sets must be established.

Our group at MIT has developed a thin film silicon solar cell technology that meets the necessary advances in design and fabrication. Thin film silicon solar cells can be fabricated in low cost, continuous production lines using existing standard tools with wide material property tolerances. In addition, thin film solar panels are ideal for local power generation due to a flexible form factor that allows for integration into building facades. Advanced device designs employing photonic crystal reflectors and multi-junction tandem cell designs give >50% improvement in energy conversion efficiency for silicon thin film cells.

This project will chart the path to standardization and sales growth of high efficiency thin film silicon solar cells. The i-Team will work with the technology team to develop a product roadmap that includes revenue/technology barriers, solutions and timelines for the market penetration of low cost, high efficiency thin film silicon solar cells. The anticipated work products are 3-yr, 10-yr and 30-yr projections of profitability, product attributes and market size.

LivesLikeMine

Pawan Sinha
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences,

Many real-world processes can only be understood and compared as an unfolding sequence of events. Our ability to compare sequences is in general limited to the availability of real-valued indicators, such as stock-prices, economic indicators, acquisition power, etc. However, some of the most interesting temporal patterns are too complex to be summarized with a simple numerical value. The unfolding of a human life is a compelling example.

We have developed a technology at the interface of computer science and cognitive science that can represent and compare complex temporal trajectories. The i-Team will focus on the analysis of potential applications and markets for this technology. Some potentially fruitful avenues to explore include career-planning/job-search, health-care and social-networking. The goal of the team will be to analyze the market opportunities in these and other domains, sharpen the market focus, and suggest how to position LivesLikeMine relative to current large entities like, for instance, CareerBuilder and Monster.

Indoor Room-Grain Location Discovery

Seth Teller
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) & Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

In early 2008 we plan to deploy an indoor location discovery service within several campus buildings. The service will be analogous to GPS service, but will report position in terms of building and room number, rather than in XYZ coordinates. We will call it IPS for indoor positioning service.

A user with an IPS-enabled device -- a laptop or PDA with IPS client software -- can discover the device's location at about 1 Hz as the device is moved about within the IPS-enabled region. Analogously, location discovery can be done for a trackable hardware "tag" typically attached to something mobile that is not a laptop or PDA. We challenge students to demonstrate innovative services and applications using IPS as a building block.

Endotracheal Tube Placement Sensor

Hongshen Ma
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Rob Sheridan
Massachusetts General Hospital

The endotracheal tube (ETT) is ubiquitous in hospitals. Placing the tube at the correct location in the throat requires a high level of skill and training. Unplanned displacement of the tube can result in patient death due to the impracticality of constant bedside supervision.  Currently, there are no economical and convenient means of verifying the tube’s position. 

We have developed a hand-held sensor that allows a doctor or nurse to “see” the position of the ETT. By displaying the location of the tube on an LCD screen placed directly over the sensor, this device provides intuitive and real-time feedback while monitoring or adjusting the position of the ETT. The entire device is designed to fit comfortably into the hand of a clinician, and is powered using rechargeable lithium-ion battery.  This device can also be adapted for continuous patient monitoring to provide automated notification of unplanned tube displacement.

i-Team members will identify and pursue a path to commercialize this technology, develop strategies for penetrating the existing medical devices market, and explore additional applications of the core technology in areas such as for locating catheters and endoscopic instruments.

Siftables

David Merrill, Jeevan Kalanithi, Pattie Maes
Media Lab

Activities involving digital content have diverse workflows and results, however the mouse-keyboard interface is a 'one-size fits all' tool that forces the same physical performance regardless of the task at hand. Siftables offers a powerful alternative to the desktop metaphor. Siftables are sets of compact, interactive devices with motion sensing, full color graphical display, and wireless communication that give tangible embodiment to any digital content stored in a desktop computer, including images, video clips, emails, musical phrases, etc. The siftables can be grouped, tiled, sequenced, shaken, tilted, or moved in other physical ways. displaying dynamic graphics and remaining synchronized with the digital content they represent. These physical actions map to actions on the data -- apply a tag to a group by physically grouping a set of siftables, adjusting contrast by tilting a siftable that is displaying a photograph, etc.

The key challenge for i-Team members will be to explore the large space of possible markets for this disruptive new user interface technology to identify a set of most-promising applications.

Antifungal Hydrogels

Daniel Kohane
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology,
Gerald Fink
Department of Biology and Whitehead Institute, and
Bob Langer
Institute Professor and Professor of ChemE & BE

Treatment for several critical and cronic illnesses requires insertion of an indwelling catheter. Fungal sepsis is a leading cause of death in patients with indwelling vascular catheters, particularly in immunocompromised individuals. We have developed a dextran-based hydrogel containing the polyene macrolide amphotericin B (AmB), an FDA-approved, potent antifungal agent widely used in clinical practice. Amphotericin's indications, use, chemistry and toxicity are well characterized. It has a broad spectrum of antifungal activity, and few resistant strains have been reported after 40 years in clinical use. The dextran hydrogels, loaded with AmB (amphogels) described here have marked antifungal efficacy in vitro for at least 53 days, and prevent fungal infection when implanted in mice.

Variations on this systems, including modifications that would allow use as an injectable therapeutic, or means to broaden its antimicrobial spectrum to include bacteria, are being investigated. Some of these applications may involve a paradigm shift in the way that local infections are treated, since systemic therapy is currently the mainstay. With these systems, efficacy could be enhanced and toxicity decreased. The i-Team will help assess the market space for devices in this product category and develop both a scientific plan (what should be developed) and go-to-market strategy (how it should be marketed).