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 wherein business and analysis can collaborate to spur technological innovation.

By its partnership with the College of Engineering, Accenture supplies 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 strategies, with the objective of making novel sensing and actuation gadgets that revolutionize interactions between folks 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 comfortable textiles-based pneumatic actuators. With the assist of an Accenture Fellowship, she is going to advance her work of mixing sensing and actuating gadgets and discover the event of haptic gadgets 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 functions 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 varieties the idea of transformative general-purpose applied sciences (GPTs) akin to GPT4. An Accenture Fellowship will allow Munyikwa to conduct analysis aimed toward illuminating the present and potential impression of basis fashions (together with giant language fashions) on work and duties widespread to “high-skilled” data staff in industries akin to advertising, authorized providers, and drugs, wherein basis fashions are anticipated to have important financial and social impacts. A major objective of her undertaking is to look at the impression of AI augmentation on duties like copywriting and long-form writing. A second intention is to discover two major ways in which basis fashions are driving the convergence of artistic and technological industries, specifically: decreasing the price of content material era and enabling the event of instruments and platforms for training and coaching. Munyikwa’s work has essential implications for using 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 programs 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 growth towards societally useful functions, like local weather change mitigation. An Accenture Fellowship will assist Vaccaro’s present work towards two key goals: figuring out synergies between people and AI-based software program to assist design human-AI programs that tackle 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 concept, and experimental design to create environment friendly, dependable, and sustainable subject experiments in varied domains. In his present work, Wang is making use of statistical studying strategies akin to on-line studying and bandit concept to check the effectiveness of recent remedies, vaccinations, and well being care interventions. With the assist of an Accenture Fellowship, he’ll design experiments with the precise intention 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 comprise illness outbreaks throughout pandemics like Covid-19. The advantages of enhanced experiment design and the gathering of high-quality information lengthen effectively past well being care; for instance, these instruments may assist companies optimize consumer engagement, check 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 assist of robust companies and the higher social good.

Aaron Michael West Jr. is a PhD candidate whose analysis seeks to reinforce our data of human motor management and robotics. His work goals to advance rehabilitation applied sciences and prosthetic gadgets, in addition to enhance robotic dexterity. His earlier work has yielded beneficial insights into the human capability to extract data solely from visible shows. Particularly, he demonstrated people’ capability to estimate stiffness based mostly 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 assist 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.