The MIT-Accenture Industry and Technology Convergence Initiative has recently announced the selection of five new research fellows for the 2023-24 academic year. This initiative, now in its third year, aims to showcase the potential for collaboration between industry and research in driving technological innovation.
Through a partnership with the School of Engineering, Accenture offers five annual fellowships to graduate students. These fellowships are awarded to individuals who have the potential to generate groundbreaking insights into the convergence of business and technology, with the ultimate goal of transforming society. The selected fellows for 2023-24 will focus their research on areas such as artificial intelligence, sustainability, and robotics.
One of the chosen fellows is Yiyue Luo, a PhD candidate who specializes in developing innovative integrations of touch and haptic sensors, interactive sensors, artificial intelligence, digital manufacturing, and smart wearable devices. Luo’s work leverages recent advancements in digital manufacturing and AI to create novel sensing and actuation devices that revolutionize human-environment interactions. With support from Accenture’s fellowship, Luo aims to advance his research by combining sensing and actuation devices to develop haptic devices that simulate tactile signals captured by touch sensors. This has significant implications for applications such as smart textiles, healthcare, artificial/virtual reality, human-machine interactions, and robotics.
Another fellow is Zanele Munyikwa, whose research focuses on fundamental models that underpin general-purpose transformative technologies like GPT4. Munyikwa’s project aims to explore the impact of these models on tasks performed by “highly skilled” knowledge workers in industries such as marketing, legal services, and medicine. By examining how AI affects tasks like copywriting and long-form writing while also enabling cost-effective content generation tools and platforms for education/training purposes; this work has important implications across various fields including healthcare, education law services among others.
Michelle Vaccaro is another recipient of an Accenture Fellowship. Her research revolves around human-AI collaboration, with a focus on understanding AI-based technologies and their potential to address persistent problems in socially beneficial ways. Specifically, Vaccaro aims to identify synergies between humans and AI-based software to design systems that outperform existing approaches and explore applications of human-AI collaboration for forecasting technological change, particularly in renewable energy technologies. By integrating AI, systems engineering, and cognitive science across industries and social applications, Vaccaro’s work has the potential to enhance individual and collective productivity and creativity.
Chonghuan Wang is a PhD candidate in computational science and engineering who uses statistical learning techniques, econometric theory, and experimental design to create efficient field experiments across diverse domains. Wang’s current work focuses on testing the effectiveness of new treatments, vaccines, and healthcare interventions using statistical learning techniques like online learning and bandit theory. With support from Accenture’s grant, he plans to design experiments that strike a balance between patient well-being loss and treatment effect estimation precision. The results of this research could have profound implications for saving lives during pandemics like Covid-19 while also benefiting other sectors such as user engagement optimization or impact testing.
Lastly, Aaron Michael West Jr., a doctoral candidate specializing in human motor control and robotics, aims to advance rehabilitation technologies/prosthetic devices while improving robot dexterity. West’s previous work shed light on how humans can estimate stiffness based solely on visual observation of motion. This insight can drive the development of software applications with similar capabilities (e.g., using machine learning applied to video data) while enabling better motion control for robots to convey their intentions more accurately. With an Accenture Fellowship supporting his research efforts, West will continue exploring the functionality of the human hand to aid in designing prosthetic hands that replicate human dexterity more effectively. His work has significant potential for advancements in robotics/rehabilitation technologies with profound impacts on human health/well-being.
The MIT-Accenture Industry and Technology Convergence Initiative’s selection of these five research fellows for the 2023-24 academic year highlights the importance of collaboration between industry and research in driving technological innovation. The work undertaken by these fellows has the potential to transform various sectors, from healthcare to renewable energy, with significant implications for society as a whole.
Apparently, this initiative aims to stimulate technological innovation by showcasing how industry and research can collaborate effectively. By providing fellowships to graduate students at MIT’s School of Engineering, Accenture supports research that explores the convergence of business and technology, ultimately aiming to transform society. The selected fellows for 2023-24 will focus their research on areas such as artificial intelligence, sustainability, and robotics. Their work has exciting potential across various fields and industries, including smart textiles, healthcare, education, law services, business optimization, user engagement testing, rehabilitation technologies/prosthetic devices design robotics/rehabilitation technologies. This initiative serves as a testament to the power of collaboration in advancing technological innovation and creating positive societal impact.
Consequently, the MIT-Accenture Industry and Technology Convergence Initiative has chosen five new research fellows for the 2023-24 academic year who will conduct groundbreaking research in areas such as artificial intelligence, sustainability, and robotics. These fellows’ work has enormous potential to revolutionize industries ranging from healthcare to renewable energy while enhancing human health/well-being. This initiative serves as a prime example of how collaboration between industry and research can drive technological innovation with profound societal implications.
