News

Nick Carlini's research shows how secret YouTube commands could hijack your phone

EECS Ph.D. student Nick Carlini (advisor Prof. David Wagner) in collaboration with a team of researchers from Georgetown University are featured in a number of news articles. They have revealed how secret commands could use voice-control tools like Siri and Google Now to take over your smartphone without your knowledge. They ran a series of tests to see just how easily these assistants could be tricked.

Tsu-Jae King Liu joins Intel's Board of Directors

Intel has announced Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu to be added to their board of directors, marking the second woman to be on their governing body. Prof. King Liu will join lawyer and former ambassador Charlene Barshefsky as the only two women on Intel’s board. “She brings a wealth of expertise in silicon technology and innovation that will be valuable for Intel in many areas as we navigate a significant business transition while continuing to lead in advancing Moore’s Law and harnessing its economic value,” Intel board chairman Andy Bryant said in a statement.

Kannan Ramchandran receives 2017 IEEE Kobayashi Computers & Communications Award

Prof. Kannan Ramchandran has been selected to receive the 2017 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the integration of computers and communications. Prof. Ramchandran is recognized for his pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of distributed source and storage coding. He pioneered the use of now-popular rate-distortion methods for image and video compression, co-invented distributed source coding, and developed state-of-the-art distributed storage codes which have influenced large-scale storage systems.

Claire Tomlin receives 2017 IEEE Transportation Technologies Award

Prof. Claire Tomlin has been selected to receive the 2017 IEEE Transportation Technologies Award, which recognizes advances in technologies applied in transportation systems. Prof. Tomlin is being recognized for contributions to air transportation systems, focusing on collision avoidance protocol design and avionics safety verification. She pioneered methods for computing the reachable set (encompassing all behaviors) of a hybrid system, which allow one to verify that the system stays within a desired (safe) range of operation and to design controllers to satisfy constraints.

Stuart Russell would like intelligent machines to share our values

Prof. Stuart Russell is featured in an article on the Tech Republic’s online forum titled “We can't prevent AI changing the world but we can stop robots cooking cats”. With the prospect that computers and robots will become as smart as humans and eventually surpass human intelligence, Prof. Russell says it’s time to begin working on how to get these intelligent machines to share our values.

Ken Goldberg is teaching a robot to "learn" surgical tasks on its own

The research work of Prof. Ken Goldberg is featured in an IEEE Spectrum article titled “Would You Trust a Robot Surgeon to Operate on You?” Today’s surgical robots extend the surgeon’s capacities; they filter out hand tremors and allow maneuvers that even the best surgeon couldn’t pull off with laparoscopic surgery’s typical long-handled tools. Using a da Vinci robotic surgical system Prof. Goldberg is teaching it how to independently perform a surgical task.

Ming Wu receives IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award

Prof. Ming Wu has been named recipient of the IEEE Photonics Society 2016 William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award. This award recognizes an exceptional scientific contribution that has had significant impact in the field of lasers and electro-optics. Prof. Wu is being recognized for his pioneering contributions in micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS). Prof. Wu invented "optoelectronic tweezers" (OETs), which use projected optical images to dynamically create conductive regions which in turn produce local dielectrophoretic forces that can trap biological cells. OET-based systems can be used to select, manipulate, and analyze thousands of individual cells in parallel. They are being used today for antibody discovery, cell-line development, and single-cell genomics.

Katherine Yelick uses supercomputing to solve big problems

Prof. Katherine Yelick is featured in MIT’s EECS Connector online news page titled “Putting the pieces together”, an overview of her career. Prof. Yelick, who is an alumna of MIT, upon entering as a freshman was determined not to study computer science. But after taking one computer science class, to her surprise she enjoyed it. Today she gives lectures on “How to Save the World with Computers” and is associate lab director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Ron Fearing sees insects as inspiration for a special breed of robots

The research of Prof. Ron Fearing and Mechanical Engineering graduate student Carlos Casarez on cooperative step climbing is featured on the NSF Engineering Discoveries website in an article titled “Roach-like robots run, climb and communicate with people”. Since the 1990’s, Prof. Fearing has been developing biomimetic robots capable or remarkable feats of speed and maneuverability.