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Postdocs in Action

photos by Penny Beuning
Dr. Yongting Wang		Dr. Michiko Taga		Drs. Kay Jones and Penny Beuning with Tim the Beaver
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Domo: A Robotic Helper Straight out of The Jetsons!

by Aaron Edsinger, Ph.D., MIT
Postdoctoral Associate, Humanoid Robotics Group, MIT CSAIL

In the futuristic cartoon series "The Jetsons," a robotic maid named Rosie whizzed around the Jetsons' home doing household chores--cleaning, cooking dinner and washing dishes. Such a vision of robotic housekeeping is likely decades away from becoming reality. But at MIT, researchers are working on a very early version of such intelligent, robotic helpers--a humanoid called Domo who grasp objects and place them on shelves or counters. A robot like Domo could help elderly or wheelchair-bound people with simple household tasks like putting away dishes. Other potential applications include agriculture, space travel and assisting workers on an assembly line, says Aaron Edsinger, an MIT postdoctoral associate who has been working on Domo for the last three years. (See full article here)

The Green Machine

by Peter Weigele, Ph.D., University of Utah
Research Scientist, MIT Department of Biology, Jonathan King Lab

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The Biological Energy Interest Group (BEInG) is an Edgerton Center supported student group dedicated to the design, deployment, and dissemination of renewable energy systems based on sustainable biological sources. Our two current projects focus on the microbial production of hydrogen gas from either water or carbon-based feedstocks such as cellulose, glucose, or organic acids. Currently, the group is developing a low-cost photobioreactor with broad applications that is modular and scalable. Hydrogen produced by organisms growing in the reactor is captured from the culture headspace and delivered to a PEM-type fuel cell thereby generating electrical power. This platform is suitable for use in experimenting with many parameters controlling biological hydrogen production including light, temperature, feedstock, organism and strain type, as well as engineering of metabolic pathways at the genetic level. In the near future, we will be developing this system for use as a module in undergraduate teaching labs as well as science education outreach in area high schools. Contributing to this work are students Sam Jewell and Nina Kshetry.

MIT Postdoc's work spotlighted on the MIT homepage!

Benjamin C. Kirkup Jr., Ph.D., Yale University, 2004
CEE; Parsons Lab; Polz Lab

         
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The Parsons Lab is the hydrology and water lab at MIT. Within it, the Polz lab studies near-shore oceanic microbiology. In the course of these studies, many environmental isolates are screened for various properties using classic microbiology, microscopy, and molecular techniques. One of our interests is the characterization of communities of bacteria in the water, including how they feed, how they work together, and how they compete. A classic form of competition is antagonism, in which one organism kills or inhibits the growth of another. The best known antagonism is how fungi inhibit bacteria by the production of Penicillin (discovered by Fleming in the 1920's). Similarly, actinomycetes produce streptomycin, and so on. These are the classical antibiotics with which we are so familiar in medicine. However, the inverse can also occur. In this photo, the bacteria are taking their revenge by killing the molds. In fact, all combinations of killing are possible – bacteria killing each other, fungi killing each other, etc. Plants and animals participate as well.

Fleming's discovery of penicillin occurred somewhat fortuitously in similar fashion to the discovery of this fungicidal bacteria. He was looking for ways to kill bacteria, knowing them to be disease causing organisms, and stumbled over the common observation that the bacteria wouldn't grow within a certain radius of mold that contaminated his plates. In this case, however, the contaminating molds were growing over everything except this particular red/maroon bacteria. Recognizing that the bacteria was fortunately pigmented, I purposefully isolated a grey mold from the environment and patterned them on a Petri dish, to produce the MIT logo in its proper colors, using the zone of inhibition to keep the pattern distinct.

The microbial world is so vast that there is no reason to presume that this fungicide has ever been characterized. It appears broad spectrum because it kills a wide range of isolated fungi. It is possible, though unlikely, that this very agent could be successfully incorporated into a cure for various fungal diseases, including various skin diseases. Regardless of the human application, however, this observation reminds us that nature, all its shapes and sizes, is red in tooth and claw.

Gokhan's Alternative Career

Postdoc Gokhan Inalhan (center) changes a wheel on defending Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher's 2001 race car, along with some graduate student colleagues. The September 2005 wheel change challenge was part of a presentation in front of the MIT Student Center, sponsored by GM and Shell.

Comments and questions to mitpostdocs-www@mit.edu

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