MIT-Pillar ai Collective has announced three inaugural fellows for the fall 2023 semester. With support from the program, graduate students, who are in the final year of a master's or doctoral program, will conduct research in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science with the aim of commercializing their innovations.
Launched by the MIT School of Engineering and Pillar VC in 2022, the MIT-Pillar ai Collective supports faculty, postdocs, and students conducting research in ai, machine learning, and data science. Supported by a gift of Pilar VC and managed by MIT Deshpande Center for Technological InnovationThe program's mission is to advance research toward commercialization.
The Fall 2023 MIT-Pillar ai Collective Fellows are:
Alejandro Andonian SM '21 is a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering whose research interests lie in computer vision, deep learning, and artificial intelligence. More specifically, it focuses on building a generalist, multimodal ai scientist powered by vision and language generative model agents capable of proposing scientific hypotheses, running computational experiments, evaluating supporting evidence, and verifying conclusions in the same way as a human researcher or reviewer. . Such an agent could be trained to optimally distill and communicate its findings for human consumption and understanding. Andonian's work promises to create a concrete foundation to rigorously build and comprehensively test the next generation autonomous ai agent for science. In addition to his research, Andonian is the CEO and co-founder of Reelize, a startup that offers a generative ai video tool that effortlessly converts long videos into short clips, and originated from his business courses and featured the MIT Sandbox support. Andonian is also a founding ai researcher at Poly ai, a YC-backed early-stage startup building ai design tools. Andonian earned a master's degree from MIT and bachelor's degrees in neuroscience, physics, and mathematics from Bates College.
Daniel Magley is a doctoral candidate in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and technology and is passionate about making a healthy, fully functioning mind and body a reality for everyone. His cutting-edge research focuses on the development of a swallowable wireless thermal imaging capsule that could be used in the treatment and monitoring of inflammatory bowel diseases and their manifestations, such as Crohn's disease. By providing increased sensitivity and eliminating the need for bowel preparation, the capsule has the potential to greatly improve treatment efficacy and overall patient experience at routine follow-up. The capsule has completed animal studies and is entering human studies at Mass General Brigham, where Magley leads a team of engineers in the hospital's largest translational research laboratory, the Tearney Laboratory. After pilot studies with humans, the translation of the greatest technological and regulatory risks will be authorized. Magley will then begin focusing on a multi-site study to bring the device into clinics, with the promise of benefiting patients across the country. Magley earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Caltech.
Madhumitha Ravichandra is a doctoral candidate interested in advancing surface engineering and heat transfer techniques to improve the safety and performance of nuclear energy systems and reduce their environmental impacts. Leveraging its deep understanding of integrating explainable ai with high-performance autonomous experimentation, it seeks to transform the development of rad-hard sensors, which could potentially withstand and operate amid radiation levels that would render devices useless. conventional sensors. By integrating explainable ai with high-performance autonomous experimentation, he aims to quickly iterate designs, test under varied conditions, and ensure the final product is robust and transparent in its operations. His work in this space could change the paradigm in radioactive sensor development, address a glaring gap in the market and redefine standards, ensuring nuclear and space applications are safer, more efficient and at the forefront of progress. technological. Ravichandran obtained a BTech in Mechanical Engineering from SASTRA University, India.