Student inventor Alice Chen receives Lemelson-MIT Student Prize

Alice A. Chen, a biomedical engineer and graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), today received the prestigious $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for her innovative applications of microtechnology to study human health and disease. A fearless problem solver with a [...]

Heading off trauma

More than half of all combat-related injuries sustained by U.S. troops are the result of explosions, and many of those involve injuries to the head. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, about 130,000 U.S. service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have sustained traumatic brain injuries — ranging from concussion to long-term brain damage [...]

Understanding shape-shifting polymers

Shape-memory polymers are not a new discovery, as anyone who has played with Shrinky-Dinks or who has used heat-shrink tubing for wires in an electronic circuit can testify. But now, thanks to new analysis by researchers at MIT, the behavior of these interesting materials has been mathematically modeled in detail, which should make it [...]