Past Seed Fund Winners

Rethinking State Capacity in Urban Planning

• Bish Sanyal, Ford International Professor of Urban Development and Planning; Director of the Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies, Urban Studies and Planning
• Yamini Aiyar, Centre for Policy Research

New NMR Tools to Interrogate Photochemical Reactions

• Alison Wendlandt, Chemistry
• Paul White, Radboud University

Re-Framing Asian Migration and Diasporas

• Emma Teng, Professor, History
• Rachel Leow, University of Cambridge

MIT x Smart Living Lab

• Joseph Paradiso, Alexander W. Dreyfoos (1954) Professor; Associate Academic Head, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
• Denis Lalanne, University of Freiburg

Mapping out the Dark Matter in Hydrodynamic Simulations

• Lina Necib, Physics
• Justin Read, University of Surrey

Synchrotron-based infrared spectroscopy of moire quantum matter

• Long Ju, Assistant Professor, Physics
• Yasin Ekinci, Paul Scherrer Institute

Continuous Directed Evolution of RuBisCo to Improve Photosynthesis

• Matthew Shoulders, Professor, Chemistry
• Spencer Whitney, Australia National University

Design, manufacture, and characterization of auxetic stents capable of growing with the patient

• Mercedes Balcells-Camps, Principal Reseach Scientist, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• Marta Pegueroles, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

Big Data Mapping and Correlation of Environmental Containments as Monitored by Biological and Human Isotopic Uptake (Toenails for Citizen Science)

• Michael Short, Associate Professor, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Akmal Safarov, Samarkand State Univeristy

Robust Trajectory Estimation in Indian Traffic Conditions for Improved Traffic Safety

• Dr. Paolo Santi, Urban Studies and Planning
• Punit Rathore, Indian Institute of Science

Crowdsourcing Sustainable Cultural Heritage along Silk Roads in Turkey

• Takehiko Nagakura, Associate Professor of Design and Computation, Architecture
• Guzden Varinlioglu, University of Oxford

Digitizing and Archiving the Murals of Mexico's Rural Normal Schools

• Tanalis Padilla, Professor of History
• Irma Erendira Sandoval Ballesteros, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Co-Design of Renewable Energy Electric Buses in Chile

• Timothy Gutowski, PhD, Mechanical Engineering
• Jorge Ramos, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Fast and Reliable Risk-Aware Large-Scale Multi-agent Motion Planning

• Chuchu Fan, Wilson Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Kai Cai, Osaka Metropolitan University

Prediction of Complex Structures in High Void Fraction Flows by the VOF Method

• Emilio Baglietto, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Marco Pellegrini, The University of Tokyo

mRNA without a leader: defining the mechanism of translation

• Gene-Wei Li, Biology
• Jin-Der Wen, National Taiwan University

Nonreciprocal topological materials

• Liang Fu, Physics
• Hsin Lin, Academia Sinica

KU Leuven Seed Fund

Safe and Fast Motion Planning and Control for Autonomous Urban Boats using Model Predictive Control

• Daniela Rus, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Jan Swevers, KU Leuven

Understanding flow boiling enhancement via surface functionalization

• Matteo Bucci, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Maria Rosaria Vetrano, KU Leuven

UCLouvain Seed Fund

A 3D High-Order Multi-Resolution Eliptic Solver for Complex Domains

• Wim Van Rees, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
• Philippe Chatelain, UC Louvain

Innovasion: Innovations for creating value from invasive species

• Amy Smith, Senior Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering
• Kenneth Donkor, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

Anti-Gentrification Planning in Post-Industrial Woodstock, Cape Town, SA

• Brent Ryan, Associate Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy, Urban Studies and Planning
• Masilonyane Mokhele, Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Participatory Design of Solutions to Address Solid Waste and Energy Challenges in Uganda

• Daniel Sweeney, Research Scientist, Lecturer
• Michael Lubwama, Makerere University

Direct Recycling of Battery Electrode Materials in Rwanda

• Aristride Gumyusenge, Merton C. Flemings Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
• Leandre Berwa, Second Life Storage (SLS) Energy

Strenghten MIT-Sudan research cooperation on climate change and agriculture

• Elfatih Eltahir, H.M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Abdelmoneim Taha Ahmed, Agricultural Research Corporation (ARC)

Monitoring the Injured Brain in Resource-Limited Settings

• Thomas Heldt, Associate Professor of Electrical & Biological Engineering
• Anthony Figaji, University of Cape Town

MIT-Colombia Cali Seed Fund

Applying single-cell genomics to understand the pathogenesis of the yeast Malassezia in skin keratinocytes

• Alexander Shalek PhD, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• Adriana Celi, Universidad de los Andes

ICU Secondary Health Records Analysis using AI and ML Techniques

• Leo Anthony Celi MPH, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• Andres Navarro, Universidad Icesi

MIT-Colombia Universidad Nacional Seed Fund

Land Use Regulation Index Colombia

• Albert Saiz, Daniel Rose Associate Professor of Urban Economics and Real Estate, Urban Studies and Planning
• Jonathan Malagon, National University of Colombia

Reversing the Misrepresentation of the Cross-Border Region of the Amazon: Socio-environmental Integration of the Border between the Andean Amazon and the Brazilian Amazon

• Lawrence Vale, Associate Dean and Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning, School of Architecture and Planning
• Carlos Gilberto Zarate Botia, National University of Colombia

Mujeres Mineras Unidas por Colombia

• Libby McDonald, Lecturer & Inclusive Economies Lead
• Oscar Jaime Restrepo Baena, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellin

Microbial Ecology and Evolution to Advance Colombian Agricultural Systems

• Otto X Cordero, PhD, Civil and Environmental Engineering (Course 1)
• Alejandro Caro Quintero, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

FNS Gamma: Establishing cooperation in the field of fast neutron spectrometry in mixed fields of neutron and gamma radiation

• Benoit Forget, PhD, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Zdenek Matej, Masaryk University

Metabolic adaptation to aspartate synthesis deficiency in cancer

• Matthew Vander Heiden, Director, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology Professor of Biology
• Katerina Rohlenova, Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Electron Diffraction for Metal Organic Frameworks

• Peter Mueller, Chemistry
• Lukas Palatinus, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Interaction of ionizing radiation with shielding and cladding materials with engineered strain distributions and phonon spectra

• Svetlana Boriskina, Principal Research Scientist, Mechanical Engineering
• Lembit Sihver, Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Acadeny of Sciences (CAS)

Elucidating ion exchange, chemistry and function of Li anode interfaces

• Betar Gallant, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
• Michael Deschamps, CNRS, University of Orleans

Experimental Study of the Structure of a Radiative Shock Under a Magnetic Constraint

• Chikang Li, Senior Research Scientist
• Michel Koenig, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS

Aluminosilicate materials (zeolites and geopolymers) and sludge fluids: from gel to solid state

• Gareth McKinley, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
• Arnaud Poulesquen, CEA

Supporting fundamental quantum calculation to enable the atmospheric study of extra-solar planets.

• Julien de Wit, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Laurent Wiesenfeld, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France)

High-dimensional bacterial mixtures

• Julien Tailleur, Professor, Physics
• Ada Altieri, Universite Paris Cite

Complex biofluid suspensions: new methods in localized interrogation

• Lydia Bourouiba
• Elisabeth Guazzelli, Univeristy of Paris

Biologically inspired vision models: the role of central and peripheral vision, plausibility, and robustness

• Tomaso Poggio, Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Dario Zanca, Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg

Cryptographic Verification of Quantum Computation

• Vinod Vaikuntanathan, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Giulio Malavolta, Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy

Directional Recrystallization Processing of 3D Printed Superalloys

• Zachary Cordero, Boeing Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Eric Jagle, Universitat der Bundeswehr Munchen

Minimally-Invasive Optical Biosensor for Detecting UV-Induced Skin Cancer

• Dr. Giovanni Traverso, Mechanical Engineering
• Ali Yetisen, Imperial College London

Sustainable structural beam framework for a net-zero future (SustainBeam)

• Joesephine Voigt Carstensen, Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Craig Buchanan, Imperial College London

Global Tracker of Climate Change and Mental Health: Building Robust Indicators and Pathways from Interdisciplinary Knowledge

• Siqi Zheng, STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability, Urban Studies and Planning
• Emma Lawrence, Imperial College London

Accelerating the Transition to Circular Economy Futures

• Thomas W Malone, Patrick J McGovern Professor, Management
• Erkko Autio, Imperial College London

Thermomechanical testing of additively manufactured ODS superalloys

• Zachary Cordero, Boeing Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Samuel Humphry-Baker, Imperial College London

MIT-Israel Broshy Brain and Cognitive Sciences Fund

In Situ and Continuous Monitoring of Metabolites in Organ-on-Chip Micro-Systems

• Joel Voldman, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Hadar Ben-Yoav, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Causal inference in medical records for drug repurposing towards dementia - Federated learning from patient data in Israel and the US

• Dr. Leo Anthony Celi, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• Bella Vakulenko-Lagun, Haifa University

MIT-Israel Lockheed Martin Seed Fund

Developing Sustainable and 3D-Printable Thermoplastic Protein-Based Materials

• Admir Masic, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Noy Cohen, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Advanced Packaging Reliability Concerns in Electronic and Photonic Devices

• Duane Boning, Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Joseph B. Bernstein, Ariel University

MIT-Israel Zuckerman STEM Fund

Solidarity in Fractured Times: Theory, Empirics, and Law

• Andrea Campbell, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science
• Rachel Friedman, Tel Aviv University

MicroISRAEL-2050: Multi-Layer Explorations of Israel's Urban Microclimates

• Kent Larson, Principal Research, Media Arts and Sciences (MAS)
• Jonathan Natanian, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Semantic Imaging: Merging Computational Imaging and Neural Fields to Advance 3D Scene Understanding

• Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Media Arts and Sciences (MAS)
• Or Litany, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Analyzing the Resilience of the Food System in Israel

• Retsef Levi, Professor of Operations Management, School of Management
• Nir Ohad, Tel Aviv University

Learning-augmented algorithms for motif-counting

• Ronitt Rubinfeld, Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Talya Eden, Bar Ilan University

Additive manufacturing of mesoporous hierarchical materials for atmospheric water harvesting

• Svetlana Boriskina, Principal Research Scientist, Mechanical Engineering
• Shlomo Magdassi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

MIT-Italy Friuli Venezia Guilia Seed Fund

Advanced computations anD experiments on boiling heAt transfer (AIDA)

• Professor Matteo Bucci, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Alfredo Soldati, University of Udine

Revealing and exploiting quantumness via quasiprobabilities: from quantum thermodynamics to quantum sensing

• Seth Lloyd, Mechanical Engineering
• Stefano Gherardini, CNR-INO

MIT-Italy Roberto Rocca Project - Politecnico di Milano

AMBItiOuS – Additive Manufacturing for BIOlogy and life Sciences

• Professor Anastasios John Hart, Mechanical Engineering
• Bianca Maria Colosimo, Politecnico di Milano

I_AMSPACE – In-situ Additive Manufacturing for SPACE

• Professor Cem Tasan, Materials Science and Engineering
• Marco Grasso, Politecnico di Milano

MIT-Italy Universita' di Pisa Seed Fund

Improving estimates of seismic risk associated with geothermal energy exploitation operations

• Dr .Camilla Cattania, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Francesco Grigoli, University of Pisa

Quantum Structures and Enumerative Geometry

• Davesh Maulik, Mathematics
• Andrea Maffei, University of Pisa

sMall-caliber vAscular Grafts in pulsed-flow microfuidiCs (MAGIC)

• Gareth McKinley, Professor of Teaching Innovation, Mechanical Engineering
• Mario Milazzo, University of Pisa

Partially ordered soft systems: from prediction to application

• Dr. Giuseppe Romano
• Valentina Domenici, University of Pisa

Sustainable deoxygenation

• Alex Radosevich, Chemistry
• Jesus Lujan Montelongo, Cinvestav - Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados

Engineering the plant-microbiome interactions for drought resistance in the Middle East

• Christopher Voigt, Daniel IC Wang Professor, Biological Engineering
• Ali El-Keblawi, University of Sharjah

Active Ankle Foot Exoskeleton: Towards Gait Assistance for Stroke Patients

• Hermano Krebs, PhD, Mechanical Engineering
• Kinda Khalaf, Khalifa University

A Materials Approach for Removing Emerging Pollutants in Wastewater Treatment Systems (Water4Reuse)

• Mircea Dinca, W. M. Keck Professor of Energy, Chemistry
• Kyle Cordova, Royal Scientific Society

Frontiers in soudAI. Sensor technologies and machine learning for sound-based activity inference.

• Prof. Fabio Duarte, Urban Studies and Planning
• Sara Lenzi, Techinische Universitat Delft (TU Delft)

Unlocking mechanical limitations of synthetic heart stents with auxetic, silk-based fiber tubular scaffold "BioSTENT"

• Professor Markus Buehler, Mechanical Engineering
• Miguel Castilho, Eindhoven University of Technology

An autonomous Swarm of Miniaturized Robots for Surface Inspection Applications

• Stefanie Mueller, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Bahar Haghighat, University of Groningen

HIGHENTROPOL

• Ju Li, Battelle Energy Alliance Professor in Nuclear Engineering, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Stefanos Papanikolaou, National Centre for Nuclear Research

Hierarchically Porous Hybrid Metal/2D Metal-Organic Framework Films

• Professor Mircea Dinca, Chemistry
• Michal Borysiewicz, Lukasiewicz Research Network - Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics

Straintronic engineering of self-powered flexoelectronic photodetectors

• Svetlana Boriskina, Principal Research Scientist, Mechanical Engineering
• Andrzej Suchocki, Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IP PAS)

Uncertainty-Aware Artificial Intelligence for Detection of Brain and Eye Diseases

• Emery Brown, Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and of Computational Neuroscience, Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Gabriela Czanner, Slovak University of Technology

Inertial Focusing Microfluidics for High-Throughput Sorting of Cell Clusters and Circulating Tumor Cells

• Professor Ming Dao, Materials Science and Engineering
• Ivan Cimrak, University of Zilina (UNIZA), Slovakia

Advanced Physiological Estimation of Cognitive States in Neurorehabilitation Tasks using Brain-Computer Interfaces and Head-Mounted Displays (BCI-HMD) for Environment Modification

• Professor Pattie Maes, Media Arts and Sciences
• Roman Rosipal, Institute of Measurement Science

MIT-Spain INDITEX Circulrity Seed Fund

Spectroscopy study of correlated 2D materials

• Dr. Long Ju, Physics
• Elena Bascones, Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid

Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of Advanced RF Components via Additive Manufacturing

• Luis Velasquez-Garcia, Principal Research Scientist, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Jose Maria Lopez-Villegas, University of Barcelona

MIT-Spain Universidad de Alcalá Seed Fund

Social Norms as Potential Barriers to Policy Adoption

• David Rand, Management
• Olga Canto, Universidad de Alcala

Using Natural Language Processing to create automatic personalized feedback in Teacher Simulations

• Dr. Justin Reich, Comparative Media Studies/Writing
• Antonio Garcia-Cabot, University of Alcala

MIT-Spain Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Seed Fund

Mapping the multidimensional polarization and segregation in US urban areas

• Prof. Alex Pentland, Media Arts and Sciences (MAS)
• Rosa Maria Benito, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid

System Architecture of Leo Satellite Constellations

• Edward Crawley, Ford Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Ramon Martinez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid

Moment-Sum-of-Squares Techniques for Quantum Control

• Professor Alan Edelman, Mathematics
• Christoph Bruder, University of Basel

Absolute Control of the Orientation of Single-Photon Emitters in mm-sized 2D Patterns using DNA Origami

• Professor Ashwin Gopinath, Mechanical Engineering
• Guillermo Acuna, University of Fribourg

Nano-Architected Inorganic Functional Materials for Extreme Environments

• Carlos Portela, d'Arbeloff Career Development Professor, Mechanical Engineering
• Daryl Yee, Ecole Polytechnique Federake de Lausanne

Optimal control for quantum computers

• Paola Cappellaro, Ford Professor of Engineering and Professor of Physics, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Wenchao Xu, ETH Zurich