Launched in October 2020, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Business and Expertise underscores the methods through which trade and expertise can collaborate to spur innovation. The five-year initiative goals to attain its mission by means of analysis, schooling, and fellowships. To that finish, Accenture has as soon as once more awarded 5 annual fellowships to MIT graduate college students engaged on analysis in trade and expertise convergence who’re underrepresented, together with by race, ethnicity, and gender.
This yr’s Accenture Fellows work throughout analysis areas together with telemonitoring, human-computer interactions, operations analysis,  AI-mediated socialization, and chemical transformations. Their analysis covers a big selection of tasks, together with designing low-power processing {hardware} for telehealth purposes; making use of machine studying to streamline and enhance enterprise operations; enhancing psychological well being care by means of synthetic intelligence; and utilizing machine studying to grasp the environmental and well being penalties of complicated chemical reactions.
As a part of the applying course of, scholar nominations had been invited from every unit throughout the Faculty of Engineering, in addition to from the Institute’s 4 different colleges and the MIT Schwarzman School of Computing. 5 distinctive college students had been chosen as fellows for the initiative’s third yr.
Drew Buzzell is a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and pc science whose analysis considerations telemonitoring, a fast-growing sphere of telehealth through which info is collected by means of internet-of-things (IoT) related units and transmitted to the cloud. At present, the excessive quantity of data concerned in telemonitoring — and the time and power prices of processing it — make information evaluation troublesome. Buzzell’s work is targeted on edge computing, a brand new computing structure that seeks to handle these challenges by managing information nearer to the supply, in a distributed community of IoT units. Buzzell earned his BS in physics and engineering science and his MS in engineering science from the Pennsylvania State College.
Mengying (Cathy) Fang is a grasp’s scholar within the MIT Faculty of Structure and Planning. Her analysis focuses on augmented actuality and digital actuality platforms. Fang is growing novel sensors and machine elements that mix computation, supplies science, and engineering. Transferring ahead, she is going to discover matters together with gentle robotics methods that could possibly be built-in with garments and wearable units and haptic suggestions so as to develop interactions with digital objects. Fang earned a BS in mechanical engineering and human-computer interplay from Carnegie Mellon College.
Xiaoyue Gong is a doctoral candidate in operations analysis on the MIT Sloan Faculty of Administration. Her analysis goals to harness the ability of machine studying and information science to cut back inefficiencies within the operation of companies, organizations, and society. With the assist of an Accenture Fellowship, Gong seeks to seek out options to operational issues by designing reinforcement studying strategies and different machine studying methods to embedded operational issues. Gong earned a BS in honors arithmetic and interactive media arts from New York College.
Ruby Liu is a doctoral candidate in medical engineering and medical physics. Their analysis addresses the rising pandemic of loneliness amongst older adults, which results in poor well being outcomes and presents significantly excessive dangers for traditionally marginalized folks, together with members of the LGBTQ+ group and other people of shade. Liu is designing a community of interconnected AI brokers that foster connections between consumer and agent, providing psychological well being care whereas strengthening and facilitating human-human connections. Liu obtained a BS in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins College.
Joules Provenzano is a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering. Their work integrates machine studying and liquid chromatography-high decision mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) to enhance our understanding of complicated chemical reactions within the atmosphere. As an Accenture Fellow, Provenzano will construct upon latest advances in machine studying and LC-HRMS, together with novel algorithms for processing actual, experimental HR-MS information and new approaches in extracting structure-transformation guidelines and kinetics. Their analysis might pace the tempo of discovery within the chemical sciences and advantages industries together with oil and fuel, prescribed drugs, and agriculture. Provenzano earned a BS in chemical engineering and worldwide and world research from the Rochester Institute of Expertise.
