News & Events

Sangeeta Bhatia and Richard Young recognized for their contributions to “advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health.” Sangeeta Bhatia, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of health sciences and technology, and Richard Young, an MIT professor of biology, are among the 100 new…

It was standing room only for the first annual MIT Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) Founders Lecture, delivered by Arup K. Chakraborty, on Oct. 30. Chakraborty, the founding director of IMES and the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry at MIT, spoke about “Gems, T Cells, Dewdrops and Genes.”

James J. Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), has been awarded the 2020 Max Delbrück Prize in Biological Physics from the American Physical Society (APS), “for pioneering contributions at the interface of physics and biology, in particular…

System could help with diagnosing and treating noncommunicative patients. Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a system that measures a patient’s pain level by analyzing brain activity from a portable neuroimaging device. The system could help doctors diagnose and treat pain in unconscious and noncommunicative patients, which could reduce…

Researchers identify nearly 8,000 strains of bacteria, while also clarifying their genetic and metabolic context. The human digestive tract is home to thousands of different strains of bacteria. Many of these are beneficial, while others contribute to health problems such as inflammatory bowel disease. Researchers from IMES/MIT and the Broad…

New technique could help doctors determine whether patients are at risk from elevated pressure. Traumatic brain injuries, as well as infectious diseases such as meningitis, can lead to brain swelling and dangerously high pressure in the brain. If untreated, patients are at risk for brain damage, and in some cases…

Smart materials change properties in response to specific DNA sequences; could be used in a variety of devices. The CRISPR genome-editing system is best-known for its potential to correct disease-causing mutations and add new genes into living cells. Now, a team from MIT and Harvard University has deployed CRISPR for…

A course that combines machine learning and health care explores the promise of applying artificial intelligence to medicine. MIT professors David Sontag and Peter Szolovits don’t assign a textbook for their class, 6.S897HST.956 (Machine Learning for Healthcare), because there isn’t one. Instead, students read scientific papers, solve problem sets based on current topics like opioid…

Hacking Nanomedicine kicks off a series of events to develop an idea over time. A traditional hackathon focuses on computer science and programming, attracts coders in droves, and spans an entire weekend with three stages: problem definition, solution development, and business formation. Hacking Nanomedicine, however, recently brought together graduate and postgraduate students…

Along the genome, proteins form liquid-like droplets that appear to boost the expression of particular genes. In recent years, MIT scientists have developed a new model for how key genes are controlled that suggests the cellular machinery that transcribes DNA into RNA forms specialized droplets called condensates. These droplets occur…