Past Seed Fund Winners

Disaster Response Optimization Using Aerial Assets

• Hamsa Balakrishnan, Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Adriana Andreeva-Mori, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Toward the holistic digital touch experience: Revealing spatio-temporal processing for multisensory feedback in cutaneous displays    

• Lynette Jones, Senior Research Scientist, Mechanical Engineering 
• Hsin-Ni Ho, Kyushu University

Planning for Aging Societies via Smart Shrinkage in the US and Japan

• Brent Ryan, Head of the City Design and Development Group, Urban Studies and Planning
• Takefumi Kurose, Kyushu University

Low-cost sensing for air quality, heat, and noise in the city. Exploring quantitative methods and citizen engagement strategies towards exposure estimation and mitigation.

• Paolo Santi, Principal Research Scientist, Urban Studies and Planning
• Yuji Yoshimura, University of Tokyo

New nanotechnologies for solar fuels production

• Moungi Bawendi, Lester Wolfe Professor in Chemistry, Chemistry
• Francesca Freyria, Politecnico di Torino

Controlling and imaging chirality and topology in magnetic heterostructures

• Geoffrey Beach, Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
• Gisela Schütz, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

Identifying cellular regulatory pathways by integrating high-throughput screening transcriptomics and imaging using AI

• Ernest Fraenkel, Professor, Biological Engineering
• Peter Heutink, DZNE

Microbial Electrochemical Technologies for Pesticide Remediation

• Ariel Furst, Raymond (1921) & Helen St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemical Engineering
• Ola Gomaa, Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority

Imaging Emergent Quantum Phenomena at Nano-meter Scales

• Long Ju, Assistant Professor, Physics
• David Ritchie, University of Cambridge

Graphene-heterostructured devices for integrated quantum photonics

• Jeehwan Kim, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
• Dorian Gangloff, University of Oxford

Exploring Argentinian lake deposits as analogues of early Earth and Mars

• David McGee, Associate Professor, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Fernando Gomez, CICTERRA + Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

in silico and in vitro lung simulators for an implantable ventilator

• Ellen Roche, W.M Keck Career Development Professor, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• Daniel Hurtado, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Non-Destructive Detection of Spinodal Decomposition and Long-Term Thermal Degradation of Light Water Reactor Structural Materials using SCP/TGS Techniques

• Michael Short, Professor, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Ayman Abughazal, Jordan Atomic Energy Commission

Early human arrivals to Greenland

• Roger Summons, Schlumberger Professor of Geobiology, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Mikkel Pedersen, University of Copenhagen

Digging Deeper - enhancing the gravitational-wave dataset

• Salvatore Vitale, Assistant Professor, Physics
• Gregory Ashton, Royal Holloway, University of London

Leveraging US Damage Data to Estimate AI-Based Hurricane Damage in Korea

• Siqi Zheng, STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability, Urban Studies and Planning
• Hyunjoo Yang, Sogang University

Tunable Topological Physics in Two-Dimensional Material Heterostructures

• Long Ju, Assistant Professor, Physics
• Xiaobo Lu, Peking University

Monitoring plant drought survival strategies from space

• Dara Entekhabi, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Gabrielle De Lannoy, KU Leuven

Development of a quantitative methodology for assessment of novel anesthetic regimens

• Emery Brown, Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Rafael Barra, Universidad de Santiago de Chile

prediction model using machine learning for postoperative outcomes for patients with preoperative anemia undergoing major non-cardiac surgery

• Emery Brown, Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Susana Medina Gordillo, Universidad de San Buenaventura Cali

Subduction of the Caribbean tectonic plate revealed by atypical earthquakes

• William Frank, Assistant Professor, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Germán Prieto, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Biodiversity, Natural Climate Solutions and Cities in Colombia

• John Fernandez, Director MIT ESI, Architecture
• Juan Pablo Rodriguez, Universidad de los Andes

Predicting Function of Terpene Synthases with Machine Learning

• Regina Barzilay, School of Engineering Distinguished Professor for AI and Health, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• TOMÁŠP LUSKAL, Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Clean Energy Applications with Mixed-Matrix Membranes of 2D MOFs

• Mircea Dinca, W. M. Keck Professor of Energy, Chemistry
• Karel Friess, University of Chemistry and Technology (UCT) Prague

Institutional Data Shaping Digital History

• Kurt Fendt, Senior Lecturer, Comparative Media Studies/Writing
• Jan Vondracek, Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS)

Q-boost4chemistry

• Aram Harrow, Associate Professor, Physics (Course 8)
• Martin Friák, Institute of Physics of Materials, Czech Academy of Sciences

Engineering cytokine receptor signaling for next-generation cell therapy

• Michael Birnbaum, Associate Professor, Biological Engineering
• Suman Mitra, OncoLille cancer Institutem CANTHER

Blending together seismology and geodesy to unravel slow slip's impact on the earthquake cycle

• William Frank, Assistant Professor, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Mathilde Radiguet, Université Grenoble Alpes

Wind tunnel experiments of lightning arcs

• Carmen Guerra-Garcia, Atlantic Richfield Career Development Professor in Energy Studies, Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Rafael Sousa Martins, Office National d’Etudes et Recherches Aérospatiales (ONERA)

The Mechanistic Cascade of Anosognosia in Alzheimer's Disease

• Dimitrios Pantazis, Principal Research Scientist,Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Katia Andrade, Institut de la Mémoire et de la Maladie d’Alzheimer (IM2A), Pitié-Salpêtrière’s hospital

Experimental constrains on the origin of the first continental crust

• Matej Pec, Assistant ProfessorEarth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Anastassia,Borisova, CNRS

Unveiling a central regulatory mechanism of Nature’s most abundant enzyme

• Matthew Shoulders, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Chemistry
• Angela Falciatore, Sorbonne Universite

ComPunc. Comparative Punctuation

• Kai von Fintel, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Linguistics, Linguistics and Philosophy
• Paul Rössler, University of Regensburg

Humans in the Loop: An MIT-Fraunhofer IPA Collaboration on Collaborative Robots and Digitization

• Amy Glasmeier, Professor of Economic Geography and Regional Planning, Urban Studies and Planning
• Simon Schumacher, Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA

Enabling the Scale-Up of Metal Additive Manufacturing by Data-Based Synthesis of Simulation and Experimentation

• A. JohnHart, ProfessorMechanical Engineering 
• Christoph Meier, Technical University of Munich

Autonomous docking with tumbling space junk using gecko-inspired adhesives

• Richard Linares, Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics 
• Mohamed Khalil Ben-Larbi, TU Berlin

Does heavy metal pollution accelerate bone ageing and fracture?

• Markus Buehler, McAfee Professor of Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Richard Abel, Imperial College London

Towards Zero-Pollution Infrastructure Through Structural Optimization

• Josephine Carstensen, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering 
• Christian Malaga-Chuquitaype, Imperial College London

Energy-Efficient Carbon Capture and Chemical Separations using Porous Boron Nitride Adsorbents

• John Lienhard, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water, Mechanical Engineering 
• Camille Petit, Imperial College London

Coupling thermodynamics and AI to design durable and sustainable concrete

• Elsa Olivetti, Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering 
• Rupert Myers, Imperial College London

Megahertz Magnetics for High Density and Efficient IPT Receivers

• David Perreault, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 
• Paul Mitcheson, Imperial College Londo

Automatic 3D Design and Editing

• Justin Solomon, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 
• Raja Giryes, Tel Aviv University

Understanding the behavioral decision making behind chemical discoveries

• Heather Kulik, Professor, Chemical Engineering 
• Ori Plonsky, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Israel’s community-based healthcare, urbanization and environment as a basis for developing indicators for pandemic resiliency and planning healthy cities

• Mariana Arcaya, Associate Professor, Urban Studies and Planning 
• Noam Shomron, Tel Aviv University

Non-invasive Acoustic Hyperthermia and Local Immunotherapy for the Treatment of Brain Tumors

• Natalie Artzi, Assistant Professor at BWH, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• Haim Azhari, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Integrating Machine Learning Methods and Discrete Choice Models

• Moshe Ben-Akiva, Edmund K. Turner Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Tomer Toledo, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Vibrational engineering of ferroic order in van der Waals materials

• Nuh Gedik, Professor, Physics
• Dominik Juraschek, Tel Aviv University

How abstract is phonology

• Donca Steriade, Class of 1941 Professor of Linguistics, Linguistics and Philosophy 
• Roni Katzir, Tel Aviv University

Time Reversal of Nonlinear Hamiltonians for Quantum Enhanced Metrology

• Vladan Vuletic, Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics, Physics 
• Michael Rosenbluh, Bar-Ilan University

GAP: image-Guided computational and experimental Analysis of fractured Patients

• Markus Buehler, McAfee Professor of Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering 
• Laura Maria Vergani, Politecnico di Milano

Advanced Safety Assessment of Nuclear Batteries for a Novel Paradigm of Low-Carbon Energy

• Jacopo Buongiorno, Professor, Nuclear Science and Engineering 
• Enrico Zio, Politecnico di Milano

Learning-Symbolic Programming

• Dimitris Bertsimas, Professor, Mathematics
• Antonio Frangioni, Università di Pisa

Hybrid Metamaterials for Enhanced Diagnosis and dIsease Treatment

• Luca Daniel, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 
• Simone Genovesi, Universita di Pisa

New genetic tools to study the role of serotonin in neuropsychiatric disorders

• Guoping Feng, Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Massimo Pasqualetti, University of Pisa

Carving spaces for energy efficient urban micro-farms using visualAI and IoT

• Carlo Ratti, Professor, Urban Studies and Planning
• Aldo Bischi, University of Pisa

Advancing Responsible State Behavior in Outer Space

• Danielle Wood, Professor, Media Arts and Sciences
• Claudia Cinelli, University of Pisa

Living Streets for Livable Cities

• Kent Larson, Director of The City Science Group, Media Arts and Sciences 
• Ilse Cervantes, Instituto Politécnico Nacional

Crowd-AI Teams for Engineering Product Design

• Faez Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering 
• Ioanna Lykourentzou, Utrecht University

Unlocking the Potential of Cast Glass Structures through Additive Design

• Josephine Carstensen, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering 
•  Faidra Oikonomopoulou, TU Delft

Digital Systems Engineering for Networked Infrastructure Transitions

• Olivier de Weck, Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics and Engineering SystemsAeronautics and Astronautics 
• Maarten Bonnema, University of Twente

Metal (Oxy)Nitride Electrocatalysts for Sustainable Ammonia Production

• Bilge Yildiz, Professor, Nuclear Science and Engineering 
• Vasileios Kyriakou, University of Groningen

Programmable biomaterials for Bioremediation in Peru using synthetic biology tools

• Angela Belcher, Professor, Biological Engineering
• Alberto Donayre, UTEC (Peru)

Structural oddities

• Nikta Fakhri, Associate Professor, Physics 
• Piotr Surówka, Wrocław University of Science and Technology

Self-Optimizing Additive Manufacturing

• Wojciech Matusik, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Tomasz Kurzynowski, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology

Magnetic Nanocomposites for Power Conversion

• Caroline Ross, Professor, Materials Science and Engineering 
• Andrzej Janutka, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology

Labor Market Implications of Automation in the United States and the EU

• Daron Acemoglu, Professor, Economics
• Martin Lábaj, University of Economics in Bratislava

Wastewater monitoring – advanced source of public health information and possible approach for epidemics prediction

• Leo Anthony Celi, Principal Research Scientist, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• Tomas Mackulak, Slovak University of Technology

Improving the Lifetime of the Next Generation Solid-State Batteries

• Ju Li, Professor, Nuclear Science and Engineering 
• Peter Siffalovic, Institute of Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences

Novel approaches and tools for fractional-order modeling of complex multiscale materials

• Gareth McKinley, School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation, Mechanical Engineering 
• Igor Podlubny, Technical University of Kosice

Senseable Matter

• Andreas Merhsin, Senior Research Scientist, Media Arts and Sciences 
• Vlasta Kubušová, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava

SE(3)-Equivariant Descriptors for Structural Phase Transitions

• Tess Smidt, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 
• Roman Martoňák, Comenius University, Bratislava

New generation of 2D-material-based sensors for wearable applications and textile integration

• Tomas Palacios, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Fernando Calle Gomez, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

High Temperature Applications for Sustainable Energy Conversion and Storage

• Asegun Henry, Professor, Mechanical Engineering
• Alejandro Datas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Quantification of cause-and-effect interactions in turbulent flows

• Adrian Lozano-Duran, Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics 
• Javier Jimenez, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Cross-Cultural Innovations for Gender Equity in Public Transport

• Anson Stewart, Research Scientist, Urban Studies and Planning
• Ines Sanchez de Madariaga, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid