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This winter, about a dozen students attended a workshop at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) on Raman spectroscopy. The technique uses laser light to “fingerprint” materials, which can help identify materials in fields ranging from law enforcement to art restoration.

The workshop, led by MIT postdoc Lamyaa Almehmadi in collaboration with CBA, introduced participants to a powerful technique used by law enforcement and first responders to detect narcotics and explosives, by gemologists to authenticate precious stones, and pharmaceutical companies to verify raw materials and ensure product quality. The session also featured a robotic dog equipped with sensing equipment, demonstrating how chemical analysis can be done remotely.

“It can open up new possibilities for innovation across many fields,” said Almehmadi, an analytical chemist in @MITDMSE. After attendees learned the fundamentals, she encouraged them to think creatively about new applications: “My hope is to inspire all of you to think about doing something with Raman spectroscopy that no one has done before.”

The student team formed in @MITAeroAstro's Space Resources Workshop has earned Phase II Milestone prizes in both the Prototype and Digital Twin tracks of NASA’s LunaRecycle Centennial Challenge. They will advance to a live final demonstration this summer.

The challenge asks participants to design and develop recycling solutions that can reduce non-metabolic waste and improve the sustainability of longer-term lunar missions. The MIT team’s solution, CERBERUZ (Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek), delivers a fully integrated recycling and manufacturing pipeline for some of the Moon’s most difficult waste streams: thermoset foams and mixed thermoplastics.

The system breaks down the waste into powder and then remakes it into parts using injection molding and 3D printing. This approach can transform waste into tools, life-support components, and other essential items for a lunar outpost.

🔗 Read more at the link in our bio.

The student team formed in @MITAeroAstro's Space Resources Workshop has earned Phase II Milestone prizes in both the Prototype and Digital Twin tracks of NASA’s LunaRecycle Centennial Challenge. They will advance to a live final demonstration this summer.

The challenge asks participants to design and develop recycling solutions that can reduce non-metabolic waste and improve the sustainability of longer-term lunar missions. The MIT team’s solution, CERBERUZ (Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek), delivers a fully integrated recycling and manufacturing pipeline for some of the Moon’s most difficult waste streams: thermoset foams and mixed thermoplastics.

The system breaks down the waste into powder and then remakes it into parts using injection molding and 3D printing. This approach can transform waste into tools, life-support components, and other essential items for a lunar outpost.

🔗 Read more at the link in our bio.

The student team formed in @MITAeroAstro's Space Resources Workshop has earned Phase II Milestone prizes in both the Prototype and Digital Twin tracks of NASA’s LunaRecycle Centennial Challenge. They will advance to a live final demonstration this summer.

The challenge asks participants to design and develop recycling solutions that can reduce non-metabolic waste and improve the sustainability of longer-term lunar missions. The MIT team’s solution, CERBERUZ (Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek), delivers a fully integrated recycling and manufacturing pipeline for some of the Moon’s most difficult waste streams: thermoset foams and mixed thermoplastics.

The system breaks down the waste into powder and then remakes it into parts using injection molding and 3D printing. This approach can transform waste into tools, life-support components, and other essential items for a lunar outpost.

🔗 Read more at the link in our bio.

May the Fourth Be With You!

📸: Gretchen Ertl

#starwarsday #maythefourthbewithyou

MIT engineers have developed a test to detect disease-related compounds in a patient’s breath. The new test could provide a faster way to diagnose pneumonia and other lung conditions. Rather than sit for a chest X-ray or wait hours for a lab result, a patient may one day take a breath test and get a diagnosis within minutes.

Until now, detecting such exhaled biomarkers required laboratory-grade instruments that are not available in most doctor’s offices. The MIT team, led by Assistant Professor Loza Tadesse, has now shown they can detect exhaled biomarkers of pneumonia at extremely low concentrations using the new portable, chip-scale breath test, which they’ve dubbed “PlasmoSniff.”

“In practice, we envision that a patient would inhale nanoparticles and, within about 10 minutes, exhale a synthetic biomarker that reports on lung status,” says Aditya Garg, a postdoc in @MITMechE. “Our new PlasmoSniff technology would enable detection of these exhaled biomarkers within minutes at the point of care.”

Course 6-5: Electrical Engineering With Computing, a new major launched last fall by @MITEECS, has been embraced by the MIT student community. It is now the third-most selected major among first-year students.

“The major was thoughtfully designed to offer a strong foundation in core electrical engineering concepts — such as circuits, signals, systems, and architecture — while also providing well-structured specialization tracks that prepare students for the future of the field,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s Provost.

Those tracks include structured paths to explore not only the traditional domains of electrical engineering, but cutting-edge fields such as nanoelectronics, quantum systems engineering, and photonics.

PhD student Audrey Parker’s desire to preserve the environment stemmed from her childhood growing up in Boise, Idaho, where she was constantly outside on backpacking trips, skiing, horseback riding, and otherwise enjoying what her natural surroundings had to offer.

Now at MIT, Parker works with @MIT_CEE Professor Desirée Plata to explore methane mitigation strategies, focusing on emissions from air being vented from coal mines, and dairy farms. Most engineering students wouldn’t expect their graduate research to take place in a barn full of cows, but for Parker, this is where some of the most impactful climate solutions are hiding in plain sight.

“Methane naturally converts into carbon dioxide over the course of about 12 years in the atmosphere,” Parker explains. “The technology we work on simply speeds up this natural process to achieve near-term climate benefits.”

📸: Gretchen Ertl

Palak Patel, a sixth-year doctoral student in @MITMechE, is developing advanced materials that could transform the future of human spaceflight. As a researcher in @MITAeroAstro Professor Brian Wardle’s lab, she specializes in synthesizing nanotubes and manufacturing multifunctional nanocomposites to improve structural enhancements. Her composite materials can also provide additional functionality, like extending flight durations by enhancing the ability of airplane wings to resist ice formation.

After finishing her undergraduate studies, Patel joined a company that built components for Indian Space Research Organization missions as a project engineer. The experience cemented her interest in space research and prompted her application to MIT.

“MIT is the only place where you can synthesize these nanotubes the way we do,” she says. “We’ve got some results that look great.”

📸: Gretchen Ertl

When Francis Wang ’21, Meng ’22 became captain of the MIT Edgerton Center’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team (SEVT), he realized he needed to expand his skillset beyond the scope of the focused, well-defined problems he was used to solving. He applied to the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program to strengthen his leadership skills.

During his time in GEL, Wang focused on improving his abilities to make decision, take initiative, and negotiate. He became a more effective SEVT team captain by learning to navigate the challenges of taking an engineering project from concept to completion.

“Before GEL, I saw the leadership parts of my role as a necessary evil to get to the actual interesting parts, which was the engineering,” says Wang. “The GEL Program gave me an understanding of how engineering leadership is crucial, because in the real-world any project worth working on is larger than the scope of an individual engineer.”

🔗 Read more at the link in our bio.

Strahinja (Strajo) Janjusevic, a graduate researcher with the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and the MIT Maritime Consortium, is developing AI-driven solutions to secure critical maritime infrastructure. His work addresses the intersection of technical defense and policy frameworks.

As a second-year master’s student in the Technology and Policy Program (TPP)—hosted by the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS)—Janjusevic focuses on training AI systems to identify discrepancies between legitimate vessel maneuvers and spoofed signals.

This hybrid framework is designed to empower, not replace, human operators. By providing verified navigation data, the system enables watch standers to distinguish technical glitches from strategic cyberattacks.

“In AI cybersecurity, the policy element is really important, as the field is so fast-moving and the consequences of hacking can be so dangerous,” says Janjusevic. “I think there’s still a lot of need for policy work in this space.”

📸: Gretchen Ertl

Kiyoko “Kik” Hayano’s journey — from her small hometown in rural Wyoming to MIT’s campus, and on to a working Arkansas fish farm — offers a tangible glimpse into how applied engineering, academic partnerships, and on-the-ground innovation can create new models for regenerative agriculture in the United States.

The second-year @MITMechE student joined MIT D-Lab and began working at Keo Fish Farms in Arkansas, documenting the existing water intake system, analyzing the well depth relative to geological iron strata, and evaluating filtration options, in order to improve the water quality.

“I’m really grateful for the experience,” Hayano reflected after the project. “It opened my eyes to how engineering can support sustainable food systems and rural communities.”

📸: Adam Glanzman

This spring, @MITEECS Professor Vincent Sitzmann is teaching 6.8300: Advances in Computer Vision, which explores geometry in computer vision, generative modeling and representation learning, and the intersection of robotics and computer vision with imitation learning and world models.

Sitzmann redesigned this graduate-level computer vision class himself, citing that he "worked hard to turn it into a class I would be excited to take as a student.”

“Teaching at the edge of a field can feel a bit daunting, especially in areas like AI, robotics, and computer vision, where many questions are still open and the theory is still developing,” he noted. “There’s a natural pull toward topics with well-established foundations because they are often easier to present and come with a clear framework. But some of the most exciting developments today don’t yet have that kind of structure.”

📸: Conor McArdle

Roger Hou, SM ’24, a PhD candidate in @MITAeroAstro and two-time MathWorks Fellow, services a metal 3D printer used in research led by Zachary Cordero, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor. Roger's work combines computational modeling and additive manufacturing to understand how advanced alloys evolve during fabrication, helping to inform the design of high-performance space hardware.

📸: Jake Belcher