Research
Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek

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

Space Exploration Initiative
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Peristaltic Suit

​Prolonged exposure to microgravity is known to cause various acute health risks, including muscle atrophy, bone loss, cardiovascular decon…
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Biomechatronics

Enhancing human physical capability
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Space Enabled

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

Making the invisible visible–inside our bodies, around us, and beyond–for health, work, and connection
Article Research

Patches to the rescue

MIT Technology Review reports on transdermal drug delivery research from the Conformable Decoders group, led by Professor Canan Dagdeviren.
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Media Lab Research Theme: Connected Mind + Body

Connected Mind + Body | Revolutionizing the future of mental and physical wellbeing
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Targeted intracellular degradation of SARS-CoV-2 via computationally optimized peptide fusions

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has elicited a global health crisis of catastrophic proportions. With on…
Project Research

Life-Nanomachine Synergism

For more details and recent updates visit:  https://web.mit.edu/deblina-sarkar/Nanoelectronics has the potential to enable radica…
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Candlewax Rockets: A Green Alternative for In-Space Propulsion

Wax-based hybrid rocket propellants, including paraffin (common candlewax) and beeswax show promise as high-performing hybrid rocket propel…
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A tailored, electronic textile conformable suit for large-scale spatiotemporal physiological sensing in vivo

The rapid advancement of electronic devices and fabrication technologies has further promoted the field of wearables and smart textiles. Ho…
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Understanding Molecular Evolution

Humanity has harnessed evolution to sculpt domesticated animals, crops, and molecules, but the process remains a black box. Which combinati…
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Community Biotechnology

Community Biotechnology
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Mice Against Ticks - Preventing tick-borne disease by permanently immunizing mice

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne infection in North America. People are infected when bitten by ticks; ticks are typically infe…
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How to Grow (Almost) Anything - A New Model for Global Synthetic Biology Education

A Distance Learning Model for Global Laboratory-Based Synthetic Biology Education Synthetic Biology ( SynBio) tools hold the…
Project Research

Aguahoja II

Aguahoja II builds upon the platform technology of its predecessor, enabling large-scale multi-material 3D printing with abundant, organic …
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Project Research

Aguahoja III

Aguahoja III expands the capabilities of a broad library of sustainable, organic 3D materials with generative patterns that countervail str…
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Conformable Ultrasound Patch (cUFP) For Cavitation-Enhanced Transdermal Drug Delivery

Ultrasound-induced transdermal drug delivery (sonophoresis) has long lingered in the by-lanes of academic and industrial research, and has …
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Project Research

Envirome Monitoring with CRISPR Biosensors

In recent years, there has been an increase in low-cost and open-source electronic and chemical sensors that hobbyists, concerned citizens,…
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Archived
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Radiofungi: Biological Pigments for Radioprotection

A major concern for manned missions is space radiation. Ionizing radiation is known to pose both acute and chronic risks to many organisms,…
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Archived
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Fluid Expressions - Art and Craft in Microgravity

When imagining human life in space, how will we express our humanity and creativity in an alien environment? Can the art we make both refle…
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Archived
Project Research

H0TP0T

By Larissa Zhou and Adam ZacharFood is crucial to maintaining the physical and psychological health of humans in space. Eating food pr…
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Archived
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Reconfigurable space structures

Rapid prototyping platforms such as 3D printers used for digital fabrication are today able to manufacture custom objects for specific task…
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Archived
Project Research

Zenolith - An Interplanetary Time Device

On Earth, morning, noon, and night have their own specific meanings. The feeling of a second or a minute passing by, the shortening of the …
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Archived
Project Research

Self Assembling Space Frames

Ever wish you could toss your folded up tent and have it self-assemble mid-air?  Well...you can. In a zero gravity environment.Self As…
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Archived
Project Research

Harmony in Precarity

By Po-Hao ChiHow could microgravity/hypergravity shape our perceptual experience of listening with weightlessness? How can we seek to explo…
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Archived
Project Research

Miniature Optical Steered Antenna for Intersatellite Communication (MOSAIC)

The Miniature Optical Steered Antenna for Intersatellite Communications (MOSAIC)By Shreeyam KackerThe Miniature Optical Steered Antenn…
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Archived
Project Research

Moving Liquids With No Moving Parts

Solid-state microfrabricated devices are in development to replace contemporary heavy mechanical components for use in spacecraft propellan…
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Archived
Project Research

Ø-scillation: oscillating chemistry in zero gravity and beyond

How did life originate? Nobody knows. Life might not even be native to our Earth - it might have come from asteroids or the interstellar me…
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Archived
Project Research

AgriFuge

By Somayajulu Dhulipala and Manwei ChanAs humanity explores deeper into space, long-duration missions will require horticulture activities …
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Archived
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Panspermia

By Nancy Valladares and Rae Yuping HsuThis project is an art performance that seeks to rethink imaginaries of multispecies surviv…
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Archived
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SpaceHuman 2.0

SpaceHuman is a soft robotics device designed to facilitate the exploration of environments with reduced gravity in a view of democratizati…
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Archived
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ELI: Electronic Life-detection Instrument

Life on Mars, if it exists, could have been transferred between Earth and Mars due to meteorite impacts. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial G…
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Archived
Project Research

The Telemetron

Today, the environments that humans occupy in space are designed for survival. Humans are carefully shuttled to and from space, and during …
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Cyber Biome

CyberBiome is a programmable bio-digital organ, a wearable biosynthesis platform for personalized, on-demand production of therapeutics and…
Project Research

conformable Multimodal Sensory Facemask (cMaSK)

Facemasks are used to reduce exposure to viruses and other environmental hazards such as air pollution, and integrating wearable electronic…
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Conformable Decoders

Converting the patterns of nature and the human body into beneficial signals and energy
Project Research

Receptor S-layer Electrical Nano Sensing Array (RESENSA)

A modular, membrane protein design based biomimetic sensing system named RESENSA (Receptor S-layer Electrical Nano Sens…
Article Research

Canan Dağdeviren: “Follow your dream because life is too short to follow someone else’s”

Canan Dağdeviren, head of the Conformable Decoders research group, discusses her time at the MIT Media Lab and where her research is headed.
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Responsive Environments

Augmenting and mediating human experience, interaction, and perception with sensor networks
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Affective Computing

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

Cultivating wisdom through evolutionary and ecological engineering
Article Research

New sensor mimics cell membrane functions

The device detects the same molecules that cell receptors do, and may enable routine early screening for cancers and other diseases.
Project Research

Microgravity Extrusion

Traditional additive manufacturing processes, especially those that make use of liquid resin as the feedstock, are constrained by the gravi…
Project Research

The Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit

By Rachel BellisleOverview:The Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit (GLCS or “Skinsuit”) is an intravehicular activity suit for astronau…
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Tangible Media

Invent new tangible and embodied interactions that inspire and engage people
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Opera of the Future

Extending expression, learning, and health through innovations in musical composition, performance, and participation
Article Research

Why are we sending a plastic-eating enzyme to space?

A collaboration with researchers from the Space Exploration Initiative is investigating biological processes to upcycle plastics.
Article Research

A global lab for teaching and practicing synthetic biology

A pandemic-fueled transformation of the MIT course "How to Grow (Almost) Anything" leads to next steps in democratizing synthetic biology
Article Research

Artist Ani Liu has some radical suggestions for what pregnancy could look like: It begins with artificial wombs

The artist's incisive exhibition at Cuchifritos Gallery addresses the biological and political realities of childbearing and rearing.
Publication Research

AgriFuge: An exploration of controlled irrigation methods for a rotating plant habitat

Somayajulu Dhulipala, Manwei Chan. Agrifuge: An exploration of controlled irrigation methods for a rotating plant habitat. IAC-22, Paris, France. IAC-22,A2,3,4,x69080.
Publication Research

A conformable sensory face mask for decoding biological and environmental signals

Kim, J., Marcus, C., Ono, R., Sadat, D., Mirzazadeh, A., Jens, M., Fernandez S. V., Zheng, S., Durak, T., Dagdeviren, C.†, “Conformable Multimodal Sensory Facemask for Decoding Biological and Environmental Signals”, Nature Electronics, 5, 794–807, 2022. [Cover Image]
Post Research

Lara Ozkan selected as a MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Scholar

Lara Ozkan (undergraduate researcher in the Conformable Decoders group) was selected as MIT Schwarzman College of Computing’s SERC Scholar.
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Molecular Machines

Engineering at the limits of complexity with molecular-scale parts
Project Research

conformable Facial Code Extrapolation Sensor (cFaCES)

AbstractDevices that facilitate nonverbal communication typically require high computational loads or have rigid and bulky form factors&nbs…
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Health 0.0

Health 0.0
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Project Research

Helping Emergency Care Physicians Diagnose Sepsis and Bacterial Infections with Machine Learning and Vision

General overview:Sepsis, a life-threatening complication of bacterial infection, leads to millions of worldwide deaths requires significant…
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Archived
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AI Methods for Rapid Automated Staining and Destaining of Tissue Biopsies in Hospitals

General OverviewStaining of tissues sections using chemical and biological dyes has been used for over a century for visualizing various ti…
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Article Research

Breaking through the mucus barrier

A capsule that tunnels through mucus in the GI tract could be used to orally administer large protein drugs such as insulin.
Article Research

Cell Rover: Exploring and augmenting the inner world of the cell

MIT researchers describe an intracellular antenna that's compatible with 3D biological systems + can operate wirelessly inside a living cell
Article Research

The future of treating aging

Francesca Riccio-Ackerman and co-authors consider advances in the treatment of conditions associated with aging.
Project Research

Nanoscale mapping of bio-molecular building blocks of brain

For more details and recent updates visit:  https://web.mit.edu/deblina-sarkar/For understanding the brain structure, it is neces…
Article Research

Microscopy technique reveals hidden nanostructures in cells and tissues

Separating densely packed molecules before imaging allows them to become visible for the first time.
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Scalable Cooperation

Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence
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Open Ocean

Open Ocean
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Open Agriculture (OpenAg)

Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg)
Center for Civic Media
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Archived
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Mediated Matter

Designing for, with, and by nature
Article Research

Artist Xin Liu lets science-backed absurdity take the wheel

The artist and MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative Arts curator makes work that explores why the seemingly impossible is possible.
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Project Research

Big Ocean, Big Data

More ocean data has been collected in the last two years than in all previous years combined, and we are on a path to continue to break tha…
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Archived
Project Research

Gender Shades

The Gender Shades project pilots an intersectional approach to inclusive product testing for AI.Algorithmic Bias PersistsGender Shades is a…
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