The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Business and Expertise has introduced 5 new analysis fellows for 2023-24. Now in its third yr, the initiative underscores the methods through which trade and analysis can collaborate to spur technological innovation.
By way of its partnership with the Faculty of Engineering, Accenture offers 5 annual fellowships awarded to graduate college students with the goal of producing highly effective new insights on the convergence of enterprise and expertise with the potential to remodel 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 growing revolutionary integrations of tactile sensing and haptics, interactive sensing and AI, digital fabrication, and sensible wearables. Her work takes benefit of latest advances in digital manufacturing and AI, and the convergence in superior sensing and actuation mechanisms, scalable digital manufacturing, and rising computational strategies, with the aim of making novel sensing and actuation units that revolutionize interactions between individuals and their environments. In previous initiatives, Luo has developed tactile sensing attire together with socks, gloves, and vests, in addition to a workflow for computationally designing and digitally fabricating mushy textiles-based pneumatic actuators. With the assist of an Accenture Fellowship, she’s going to advance her work of mixing sensing and actuating units and discover the event of haptic units that simulate tactile cues captured by tactile sensors. Her final goal is to construct a scalable, textile-based, closed-loop human-machine interface. Luo’s analysis holds thrilling potential to advance ground-breaking functions for sensible 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 kinds the premise of transformative general-purpose applied sciences (GPTs) similar to GPT4. An Accenture Fellowship will allow Munyikwa to conduct analysis geared toward illuminating the present and potential affect of basis fashions (together with massive language fashions) on work and duties widespread to “high-skilled” data staff in industries similar to advertising, authorized companies, and drugs, through which basis fashions are anticipated to have important financial and social impacts. A major aim of her mission is to look at the affect of AI augmentation on duties like copywriting and long-form writing. A second goal is to discover two major ways in which basis fashions are driving the convergence of artistic and technological industries, particularly: decreasing the price of content material era and enabling the event of instruments and platforms for training and coaching. Munyikwa’s work has vital implications for using basis fashions in lots of fields, from well being care and training to authorized companies, enterprise, and expertise.
Michelle Vaccaro is a PhD candidate in social engineering programs whose analysis explores human-AI collaboration with the objectives of growing a deeper understanding of AI-based applied sciences (together with ChatGPT and DALL-E), evaluating their efficiency and evolution, and steering their growth towards societally helpful functions, like local weather change mitigation. An Accenture Fellowship will assist Vaccaro’s present work towards two key aims: figuring out synergies between people and AI-based software program to assist design human-AI programs that deal with persistent issues higher than current approaches; and investigating functions of human-AI collaboration for forecasting technological change, particularly for renewable vitality applied sciences. By integrating the traditionally distinct domains of AI, programs engineering, and cognitive science with a variety of industries, technical fields, and social functions, 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 idea, 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 strategies similar to on-line studying and bandit idea to check the effectiveness of latest remedies, vaccinations, and well being care interventions. With the assist of an Accenture Fellowship, he’ll design experiments with the precise goal of understanding the trade-off between the lack of a affected person’s welfare and the accuracy of estimating the therapy impact. The outcomes of this analysis may assist to avoid wasting lives and include illness outbreaks throughout pandemics like Covid-19. The advantages of enhanced experiment design and the gathering of high-quality information lengthen nicely past well being care; for instance, these instruments may assist companies optimize consumer engagement, check pricing impacts, and improve the utilization of platforms and companies. Wang’s analysis holds thrilling potential to harness statistical studying, econometrics idea, and experimental design in assist of robust companies and the better social good.
Aaron Michael West Jr. is a PhD candidate whose analysis seeks to boost our data 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 skill to extract data solely from visible shows. Particularly, he demonstrated people’ skill to estimate stiffness primarily based solely on the visible statement of movement. These insights may advance the event of software program functions with the identical functionality (e.g., utilizing machine studying strategies utilized to video information) 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 within 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 assist main advances in robotics and rehabilitation applied sciences, with profound impacts on human well being and well-being.
