Launched in October 2020, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology underscores the methods wherein trade and expertise can collaborate to spur innovation. The five-year initiative goals to attain its mission by analysis, training, and fellowships. To that finish, Accenture has as soon as once more awarded 5 annual fellowships to MIT graduate college students engaged on analysis in trade and expertise convergence who’re underrepresented, together with by race, ethnicity, and gender.
This yr’s Accenture Fellows work throughout analysis areas together with telemonitoring, human-computer interactions, operations analysis, AI-mediated socialization, and chemical transformations. Their analysis covers a wide selection of tasks, together with designing low-power processing {hardware} for telehealth purposes; making use of machine studying to streamline and enhance enterprise operations; bettering psychological well being care by synthetic intelligence; and utilizing machine studying to know the environmental and well being penalties of complicated chemical reactions.
As a part of the applying course of, scholar nominations have been invited from every unit throughout the School of Engineering, in addition to from the Institute’s 4 different colleges and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Five distinctive college students have been chosen as fellows for the initiative’s third yr.
Drew Buzzell is a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and pc science whose analysis considerations telemonitoring, a fast-growing sphere of telehealth wherein data is collected by internet-of-things (IoT) related units and transmitted to the cloud. Currently, the excessive quantity of knowledge concerned in telemonitoring — and the time and vitality prices of processing it — make information evaluation troublesome. Buzzell’s work is targeted on edge computing, a brand new computing structure that seeks to deal with these challenges by managing information nearer to the supply, in a distributed community of IoT units. Buzzell earned his BS in physics and engineering science and his MS in engineering science from the Pennsylvania State University.
Mengying (Cathy) Fang is a grasp’s scholar within the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Her analysis focuses on augmented actuality and digital actuality platforms. Fang is creating novel sensors and machine elements that mix computation, supplies science, and engineering. Moving ahead, she is going to discover matters together with mushy robotics strategies that might be built-in with garments and wearable units and haptic suggestions with the intention to develop interactions with digital objects. Fang earned a BS in mechanical engineering and human-computer interplay from Carnegie Mellon University.
Xiaoyue Gong is a doctoral candidate in operations analysis on the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her analysis goals to harness the ability of machine studying and information science to cut back inefficiencies within the operation of companies, organizations, and society. With the help of an Accenture Fellowship, Gong seeks to search out options to operational issues by designing reinforcement studying strategies and different machine studying strategies to embedded operational issues. Gong earned a BS in honors arithmetic and interactive media arts from New York University.
Ruby Liu is a doctoral candidate in medical engineering and medical physics. Their analysis addresses the rising pandemic of loneliness amongst older adults, which ends up in poor well being outcomes and presents significantly excessive dangers for traditionally marginalized individuals, together with members of the LGBTQ+ group and other people of colour. Liu is designing a community of interconnected AI brokers that foster connections between consumer and agent, providing psychological well being care whereas strengthening and facilitating human-human connections. Liu obtained a BS in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Joules Provenzano is a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering. Their work integrates machine studying and liquid chromatography-high decision mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) to enhance our understanding of complicated chemical reactions within the surroundings. As an Accenture Fellow, Provenzano will construct upon latest advances in machine studying and LC-HRMS, together with novel algorithms for processing actual, experimental HR-MS information and new approaches in extracting structure-transformation guidelines and kinetics. Their analysis may pace the tempo of discovery within the chemical sciences and advantages industries together with oil and gasoline, prescribed drugs, and agriculture. Provenzano earned a BS in chemical engineering and worldwide and international research from the Rochester Institute of Technology.