The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology has chosen 5 new analysis fellows for 2023-24. Now in its third yr, the initiative underscores the methods by which trade and analysis can collaborate to spur technological innovation.
Through its partnership with the School of Engineering, Accenture offers 5 annual fellowships awarded to graduate college students with the intention of producing highly effective new insights on the convergence of enterprise and expertise with the potential to rework society. The 2023-24 fellows will conduct analysis in areas together with synthetic intelligence, sustainability, and robotics.
The 2023-24 Accenture Fellows are:
Yiyue Luo
Yiyue Luo is a PhD candidate who’s creating progressive integrations of tactile sensing and haptics, interactive sensing and AI, digital fabrication, and good wearables. Her work takes benefit of current advances in digital manufacturing and AI, and the convergence in superior sensing and actuation mechanisms, scalable digital manufacturing, and rising computational methods, with the purpose of making novel sensing and actuation units that revolutionize interactions between individuals and their environments. In previous tasks, Luo has developed tactile sensing attire together with socks, gloves, and vests, in addition to a workflow for computationally designing and digitally fabricating tender textiles-based pneumatic actuators. With the help of an Accenture Fellowship, she’s going to advance her work of mixing sensing and actuating units and discover the improvement of haptic units that simulate tactile cues captured by tactile sensors. Her final intention is to construct a scalable, textile-based, closed-loop human-machine interface. Luo’s analysis holds thrilling potential to advance ground-breaking purposes for good textiles, well being care, synthetic and digital actuality, human-machine interactions, and robotics.
Zanele Munyikwa is a PhD candidate whose analysis explores basis fashions, a category of fashions that types the foundation of transformative general-purpose applied sciences (GPTs) comparable to GPT4. An Accenture Fellowship will allow Munyikwa to conduct analysis geared toward illuminating the present and potential impression of basis fashions (together with giant language fashions) on work and duties widespread to “high-skilled” information employees in industries comparable to advertising and marketing, authorized providers, and drugs, by which basis fashions are anticipated to have important financial and social impacts. A main purpose of her venture is to look at the impression of AI augmentation on duties like copywriting and long-form writing. A second intention is to discover two main ways in which basis fashions are driving the convergence of inventive and technological industries, specifically: lowering the value of content material era and enabling the improvement of instruments and platforms for training and coaching. Munyikwa’s work has vital implications for the use of basis fashions in lots of fields, from well being care and training to authorized providers, enterprise, and expertise.
Michelle Vaccaro is a PhD candidate in social engineering methods whose analysis explores human-AI collaboration with the objectives of creating a deeper understanding of AI-based applied sciences (together with ChatGPT and DALL-E), evaluating their efficiency and evolution, and steering their improvement towards societally helpful purposes, like local weather change mitigation. An Accenture Fellowship will help Vaccaro’s present work towards two key goals: figuring out synergies between people and AI-based software program to assist design human-AI methods that deal with persistent issues higher than present approaches; and investigating purposes of human-AI collaboration for forecasting technological change, particularly for renewable vitality applied sciences. By integrating the traditionally distinct domains of AI, methods engineering, and cognitive science with a variety of industries, technical fields, and social purposes, Vaccaro’s work has the potential to advance particular person and collective productiveness and creativity in all these areas.
Chonghuan Wang is a PhD candidate in computational science and engineering whose analysis employs statistical studying, econometrics concept, and experimental design to create environment friendly, dependable, and sustainable area experiments in numerous domains. In his present work, Wang is making use of statistical studying methods comparable to on-line studying and bandit concept to check the effectiveness of recent remedies, vaccinations, and well being care interventions. With the help of an Accenture Fellowship, he’ll design experiments with the particular intention of understanding the trade-off between the lack of a affected person’s welfare and the accuracy of estimating the remedy impact. The outcomes of this analysis might assist to save lots of lives and comprise illness outbreaks throughout pandemics like Covid-19. The advantages of enhanced experiment design and the assortment of high-quality knowledge prolong nicely past well being care; for instance, these instruments might assist companies optimize person engagement, take a look at pricing impacts, and improve the utilization of platforms and providers. Wang’s analysis holds thrilling potential to harness statistical studying, econometrics concept, and experimental design in help of sturdy companies and the better social good.
Aaron Michael West Jr. is a PhD candidate whose analysis seeks to boost our information of human motor management and robotics. His work goals to advance rehabilitation applied sciences and prosthetic units, in addition to enhance robotic dexterity. His earlier work has yielded priceless insights into the human capability to extract info solely from visible shows. Specifically, he demonstrated people’ capability to estimate stiffness primarily based solely on the visible statement of movement. These insights might advance the improvement of software program purposes with the identical functionality (e.g., utilizing machine studying strategies utilized to video knowledge) and will allow roboticists to develop enhanced movement management such {that a} robotic’s intention is perceivable by people. An Accenture Fellowship will allow West to proceed this work, in addition to new investigations into the performance of the human hand to help in the design of a prosthetic hand that higher replicates human dexterity. By advancing understandings of human bio- and neuro-mechanics, West’s work has the potential to help main advances in robotics and rehabilitation applied sciences, with profound impacts on human well being and well-being.