Targeting a Network

January 2007 INDUSTRIAL LIAISON PROgram sm 1 Spinoff Spotlight Merrimack Pharmaceuticals

3 Lab News » Finding Yourself, FROM THE EDITORS OF TECHNOLOGY REVIEW Wirelessly » A Faster Chip Recipe » More Tolerant Yeast Spinoff Spotlight » A New Stab at the Flu Targeting a Network 4 In the Lab A New Spin on Chemistry Merrimack Pharmaceuticals identifies new drug candidates by deciphering complicated interactions in disease processes 5 Tech Transfer » Joint Project When a group of MIT researchers founded Merri » Green Genes mack Pharmaceuticals in 2000 to try to discover new » Power Boost cancer drugs, they thought it would be five to seven » Sensing a Market years before they identified even one promising can didate. Today they already have seven anticancer 6 The List drugs under development. $1K Warm-up Awards “The research platform has been so much more productive than we ever expected,” says Robert 7 ILP REPORT Mulroy, president and CEO of the company, which is based in Cambridge, MA. Merrimack calls its research platform Network Biology; the idea is to examine the dynamics of a disease process, studying how proteins interact with MIT TECHNOLOGY INSIDER each other and how biological pathways influence, publisher say, the growth and development of tumors. “A lot Jason Pontin of molecular biology was looking at one step at a editor time,” Mulroy says. “Biology is actually governed by Erika Jonietz dynamic interactions among components. No one contributor Neil Savage really in the world was studying the systems dyn copy editor amics of biology.” LINDA LOWENTHAL But in the late 1990s, as the Human Genome Proj graphic designer ect advanced, Peter Sorger, professor of biology and Matthew Bouchard biological engineering at MIT, was taking a systems- M ISTOCKPHOTO.CO Image: editorial independence oriented approach. A colleague at Harvard, associ Technology Review, Inc. is a wholly owned and separately incorporated subsidiary of ate professor of chemistry and chemical biology MIT that is editorially independent from the university and its administration, fac Gavin MacBeath, was working along similar lines. ulty, and community. All content of the MIT Technology Insider is the sole responsibility Together they developed methods of printing tiny This type of array has since become common, of the editors. Sponsors have no influence over editorial content, and no employee or spots of proteins onto glass. They created plates with Nielsen says, but Merrimack, which Sorger and contractor is permitted to have any financial three or four shallow wells in them, and printed an MacBeath helped found, takes the technology a step positions in companies covered. array of a couple of hundred different proteins in further. Its scientists use the quantitative data they MIT Technology Insider Technology Review, Inc. each well. In experiments they added a different glean about biological pathways to develop a One Main Street, 7th Floor solution containing a dozen or so more proteins to computational model of a whole system. There can Cambridge MA 02142 tel 617-475-8000 fax 617-475-8043 each well and measured how the various proteins be as many as 700 or 800 biological molecules in a www.technologyinsider.com interacted—for instance, how a change in one might model, Mulroy says, all influencing one another in a lead to a change in another, which in turn would send complicated feedback system that’s hard to visualize. out a new signal to alter what was happening. “It was “When we print out maps of our models, they look sparked by a need for dynamic systems data,” says like the nastiest hairball you’ve ever seen,” he says. Ulrik Nielsen, then a postdoc in Sorger’s lab and now But once they have the models, the researchers vice president of research at Merrimack. “The tools can use them to predict how altering a specific just weren’t there at the time.” pathway would produce different results. For

CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE  www.technologyreview.com/insider 1 Spinoff Spotlight

instance, various factors can stimulate the growth of drug, the company used its own technology to under IN BRIEF tumors, including hormones, growth factors, and stand how it works and to figure out which diseases Company interactions among cells. Once they’ve identified the it might treat. Merrimack Pharmaceuticals network of signals that causes cancer cells to grow, It can take hundreds of millions of dollars to scientists can look for drugs that interfere with those bring a drug to market, and so far Merrimack doesn’t CEO Robert Mulroy signals and shut down the network. Unlike more have that kind of money. It is doing fairly well, traditional approaches to drug discovery, which test though, with $140 million in four rounds of financ Contact compounds against a single target, Merrimack’s ing, the latest a $65 million round that closed in www.merrimackpharma.com models predict ways to disrupt one or more interac April. It has also received more than $1 million in Major products tions among proteins. Mulroy says that’s a more Small Business Innovation Research grants from the Drug for autoimmune diseases focused, and therefore faster, way to find drugs. National Cancer Institute to develop its technology. Anticancer drugs “Part of what we’re doing is getting a molecular Mulroy thinks Merrimack will probably develop view of what disease is,” he says. “Everything after drugs until they look likely to succeed, and then part that is actually engineering.” ner with a large pharmaceutical company for the The approach is also narrow enough to help target marketing phase. It’s still a bit early to make those funding therapies to specific patients. There are two general decisions, though, he says. $ More than $10 million approaches to personalized medicine, Nielsen says. The company is growing at a good clip, with about One involves actually sequencing a patient’s genome 55 employees and an additional 13 job openings. It patent strength to look for individual variations. The other looks for moved into a new facility in September 2006. / Core protection “biomarkers,” molecules that act as proxies for a par Along with Sorger, MacBeath, and Nielsen, the ticular type of disease—a person with a prostate tumor company’s founders were Anthony Sinskey, an MIT time to market might have an elevated level of prostate-specific anti professor of microbiology and health sciences and  More than three years gen (PSA) in his bloodstream, for instance. That technology, who now sits on the company’s board of approach, says Nielsen, is too generic. Rather than directors; associate professor of biology Michael look for proxies, Merrimack’s models allow it to dis Yaffe, who sits on the scientific advisory board; and cover biomarkers directly involved in the disease pro former biology professor Michael Cardone. Douglas 5432194 cess, and not those that may be a mere by-product. Lauffenburger, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker 5467893

Such biomarkers might be not just indicators of the Professor of Bioengineering and director of MIT’s 3187865 disease but potential targets for therapy. He says the biological-engineering division, sits on the scientific 6541450 same computational models used to identify disease advisory board, as do Sorger and MacBeath. 3571895 pathways in the first place can also identify biomark Liana Moussatos, an analyst at Pacific Growth 8462318 7526127 ers that reveal which patient has a particular path Equities, calls Merrimack’s approach “insightful, way activated, so that a drug developed for that unique, and cutting-edge.” She says Merrimack is pathway could be given to that patient. ahead of other companies using systems biology to PATENT MAP Of the seven possible anticancer drugs the com search for drugs, having already started clinical trials For a graphical analysis of Merrimack’s patent pany has in its labs, Mulroy hopes to get one into to show that the therapies work. According to position, go to clinical trials each year over the next five years, start Moussatos, “It could be the platform that starts put www.ipvisioninc.com/ ing this year. In general, getting a drug approved can ting personalized medicine into actual practice.” techinsider/01/07. take five to seven years, depending in part on how long it takes to recruit enough patients with the tar geted disease into the trials. Merrimack already has a drug for autoimmune Looking for MIT diseases in clinical trials. Called M-093, it is being tested in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, psoria Faculty Research? sis, multiple sclerosis, and uveitis, an inflammatory We need your opinion disease of the eye. It is a genetically engineered ver We invite you to participate sion of a natural protein called alpha fetoprotein. in a brief online survey that will help us improve the Women produce more of the protein during preg Try the ILP MIT Technology Insider. nancy; many doctors have anecdotally noted a cor responding decrease of symptoms in pregnant KnowledgeBase To participate, please visit: patients with autoimmune diseases such as rheuma http://www.surveymonkey.com/ > Please Click Here s.asp?u=534482837251. toid arthritis and psoriasis. The drug was actually developed by Mulroy’s former company, Atlantic Biopharmaceuticals, which merged with Merrimack in 2002. Although Merrimack didn’t design that www.technologyreview.com/insider 2 LAB NEWS

Finding Yourself, Wirelessly News Links Researchers in the SENSEable City Laboratory have launched a new social-networking application that allows Memory experts show sleeping rats may have users to broadcast their physical location to an approved list of friends. Called iFind, the program computes a visual dreams user’s location based on signals broadcast from a Wi-Fi access point to a wireless networking card in a portable web.mit.edu/newsoffice/ device such as a laptop. The software, which pinpoints a user’s location to within a few meters and displays it as 2006/visual-cortex.html a dot on a map of the MIT campus, uses peer-to-peer networking to broadcast that information to anyone the user wants. No information goes through a central server, so an intruder cannot use it to hijack location data. Parkinson’s disease process may be curtailed by Researchers placed a high emphasis on privacy and on letting users control the information. The software is regenerative processes in currently designed to work only on the densely networked MIT campus, but the researchers hope to expand it yeast, fruit flies to the outside world as wireless access points become more widespread. web.mit.edu/newsoffice/ 2006/lindquist.html

Chemists shed light on solar A Faster Chip Recipe energy storage Computer chips get faster because engineers keep shrinking transistors, packing more devices into the same web.mit.edu/newsoffice/ space. But researchers fear that within 10 or 15 years, they won’t be able to make the silicon-based devices any 2006/solar-nocera.html smaller. Now engineers in MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratory have used a different material to build transistors that, although similar in size to state-of-the-art silicon devices, operate at faster speeds. Genetic map offers new tool for malaria research At a recent conference, Dae-Hyun Kim, a postdoc in the lab of Jesus de Alamo, professor of electrical engi web.mit.edu/newsoffice/ neering and computer science, described a circuit the lab made using indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs). This 2006/malaria.html compound semiconductor is used to build lasers; electrons travel much faster through it than they do through silicon. Transistors made from InGaAs include a thin layer of indium aluminum arsenide to confine the electrons, but previous versions far exceeded the 65-nanometer scale of advanced silicon chips—and engineers couldn’t MULTIMEDIA LINKS get smaller versions to work. The MIT team found that by making this layer even thinner—only a few nanometers Leadership in the thick—it could build smaller transistors with the desired electrical properties. A 60-nanometer transistor made Automotive Industry from InGaAs carried 2.5 times as much current as a 65-nanometer silicon transistor in their tests. mitworld.mit.edu/video/407/

Educating Engineers for 2020 and Beyond More Tolerant Yeast mitworld.mit.edu/video/409/ Scientists have long wanted to improve the ability of common yeast cells to convert cornstarch into ethanol; such a change is essential to making ethanol a practical fuel for cars. But there are significant obstacles: high ethanol MIT ZigZag: Episode 13 levels are toxic to the microbes, and multiple genes control the process. Trying to boost efficiency and ethanol web.mit.edu/zigzag/ tolerance by traditional methods, tweaking one gene at a time, would be next to impossible. So Hal Alper, a postdoc in the labs of chemical-engineering professor Gregory Stephanopoulos and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research professor Gerald Fink, used a novel technique called global transcription machinery engineering to alter transcription factors, the proteins that control how genes are expressed. Alper’s team found that a group of three mutations in one gene created a transcription factor that led the yeast to make extra copies of the proteins encoded by at least a dozen different genes. The combined increase helped the yeast survive high concentrations of ethanol. The altered yeast also produced 50 percent more etha nol in a 21-hour period than ordinary yeast. DuPont and the U.S. Department of Energy, which are hoping to improve production processes for fuel ethanol, were among the sponsors of the research. A New Stab at the Flu A new antimicrobial paint that can be applied to doorknobs and other surfaces destroys the flu virus by ripping it to shreds. The paint, developed by biology professor Jianzhu Chen and chemistry and bioengineering profes sor Alexander Klibanov, is a thin polymer containing minuscule spikes made up of about 30 carbon atoms; these spikes rip through the membrane surrounding the influenza virus. The spikes can also destroy bacteria, includ ing E. coli and staphylococcus, many strains of which have developed resistance to antibiotics. Commercially available antibacterial products, which rely on timed release of antibiotics or heavy metals, aren’t able to kill viruses. Those substances also eventually run out, ending the antibacterial effect, and they can harm the environment. The paint, on the other hand, is environmentally inert and should last about as long as regular paint, although it would require occasional cleaning to remain effective. And it doesn’t appear to create antibiotic resistance. In tests, the coating killed 99 percent of bacteria that came in contact with it. Klibanov says it’s difficult to imagine how bacteria could evolve resistance to having holes poked in their membranes. www.technologyreview.com/insider 3 In The LAB

A New Spin on Chemistry IN BRIEF Troy Van Voorhis models the behavior of electrons, which could lead to better Name Van Voorhis Group LEDs, improved solar cells, and human-controlled photosynthesis Director The phrase “chemistry professor” may conjure images more energetically “comfortable” for the electrons. Troy Van Voorhis of beakers and Bunsen burners, but for Troy Van This means that the matched-spin majority should Voorhis the instrument of choice is a computer. eventually lose energy and become opposite-spin pairs. Contact web.mit.edu/vanvoorhisgroup “Depending on what day you come in, we could Alas, that conversion process is slow, and the model look like computer programmers or we could look like showed that the charges would disperse before the con Major projects mathematicians. It’s very rare that we look like chem version could take place. But the model also predicted Modeling electron dynamics ists,” says Van Voorhis, an assistant professor of chem that adding a few atoms of a heavy metal to the mate Studying electron spin istry whose specialty is quantum chemistry. Rather rial would change how energy flowed through the sys than running experiments, his group designs algo tem and accelerate the conversion process, producing rithms and software to model how electrons behave in a greater percentage of the desired electron pairs. Van various molecules. With a better understanding of Voorhis passed the information on to Marc Baldo, the how charges move and change within a given molecu Esther and Harold Edgerton Career Development lar structure, researchers could design molecules that Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, who increase the efficiency of light-emitting diodes or used it to produce OLEDs that had 85 percent of their enable artificial photosynthesis for energy storage. electrons in opposite-spin pairs. Understanding the electronic state of molecules is Now Van Voorhis is exploring whether a similar a complex challenge, Van Voorhis says. It’s relatively approach can improve solar cells, which take incoming simple to describe the status of electrons when they’re photons and convert them to electricity. He’s also try all in their lowest energy state. But when some are ing to understand electronic behavior in photosynthe excited and are transferring excess energy from one to sis, the process plants use to convert sunlight into food. another—as happens in chemical reactions and elec A key step in photosynthesis involves breaking up tronic devices—it’s much more complicated to deter water molecules; if researchers could devise an energy- mine what state each electron is in, which other efficient way to do this in the lab, they could convert electrons it might transfer excess energy to, and how solar energy into hydrogen for long-term storage. fast that might happen. Van Voorhis and his group Researchers have been trying for years to replicate had to develop mathematical methods to describe the the photosynthetic processes that plants have mas various possible states of a set of electrons and the tered over millennia of evolution. “People know that ways they change from moment to moment. these things work, but they are so amazingly compli As esoteric as this research is, it has immediate cated that there’s a huge degree of controversy about practical applications. Take organic LEDs (OLEDs), how they work and about how we could make them which several companies are developing for cheaper, better,” Van Voorhis says. longer-lasting lighting and thin, low-power com His work recently got a boost when he received one puter displays. OLEDs consist of thin layers of of 20 highly competitive David and Lucile Packard organic molecules, such as those used to dye cloth Foundation fellowships. That gives his group an unre ing. Pump electricity into them, and excited electrons stricted research grant of $625,000 over five years, with the right amount of energy combine to emit which he says should help him demonstrate the valid light. If the energy states are wrong, the result is ity of his work. It will also help to pay his six graduate waste heat. Developers want to get the most light students, one postdoc, and one undergraduate. they can for the electricity they put in. Mark Ratner, a professor of chemistry at North A quantum-mechanical property called spin western University, says that others have wanted to determines which state the electrons wind up in. If understand the electronic behavior of molecules, but two electrons are spinning in the same direction, they Van Voorhis has succeeded where others have failed, are less likely to emit useful photons. If they’re spin in part because he created a whole new set of equations ning in opposite directions, they produce a state that for his computer models. “He is trying to develop what is more likely to yield light. Unfortunately, about 75 I think is a much more sophisticated and at the same percent of electrons naturally combine in matching time much more physical approach to the problem,” spin states; only 25 percent have opposite spins. Ratner says. “He’s going after interesting and impor What Van Voorhis’s model showed was that con tant chemical effects that I think are beyond the abili trary to his expectations, the opposite-spin state was ties of most other people.” www.technologyreview.com/insider 4 TECH TRANSFER

datebook Joint Project Green Genes The first company spun off from the Cambridge-MIT Codon Devices, a company that produces artificial January 8–12 Institute, a collaboration between MIT and Cam DNA segments, has closed a Series B financing round 3:00–4:30 p.m. bridge University, has completed a Series A funding of $20 million, bringing the company’s total funding IAP Lecture Series: On round of £5 million (about $9.6 million). Ortho to $33 million. Highland Capital Partners led the Blindness—The “Seeing” Mimetics, of Cambridge, England, received the fund round, joined by Alloy Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Project Building N52-390, MIT ing from Eden Financial, Schroders Investment Khosla Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Management, Oxford Capital Partners, and Sloane Byers. The company plans to use the money to improve events.mit.edu/event. Robinson Private Equity. its technologies and market itself worldwide. html?id=7626953&date=20 The company is developing a line of porous, multi Based in Cambridge, MA, the company quickly 07/01/03 layered tissue regeneration scaffolds that support and accurately synthesizes DNA using its BioFab simultaneous regeneration of several tissue types to platform, which combines informatics, robotics, and January 25 help repair damaged cartilage, ligaments, tendons, gene sequencing technology. Last summer, Codon 5:30–8:30 p.m. and bone. OrthoMimetics will use the funding to made what it said was the longest strand of DNA Financial Markets: begin clinical trials of its first two products. It hopes ever shipped commercially. The strand was 35,000 Outlook 2007 to provide off-the-shelf devices that surgeons can use bases long; most previous synthetic DNAs had been Kresge Auditorium, MIT to treat joint damage early, allowing patients to delay 10,000 bases long. Formerly known as SynBio, the enterpriseforum.mit.edu/ or avoid joint replacement surgery. company was founded in 2004 by Drew Endy, an network/broadcasts/ The company was founded in 2005 by William assistant professor of biological engineering and 200701/index.html Bonfield, a professor of medical materials at Cam cofounder of the MIT Synthetic Biology Working bridge; Andrew Lynn, who received a PhD from Cam Group; Joseph Jacobson, associate professor and January 29 bridge and is now CEO; Lorna Gibson, the Matoula head of the Molecular Machines Group at the Media 6:30–9:00 p.m. S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engi Lab; George Church, professor of genetics at Har Digital Car Toys: Digital neering and associate provost at MIT; Brendan vard Medical School; and Jay Keasling, professor of Media Takes Pimping Your Harley, who received a PhD in mechanical engineer chemical engineering at the University of California, Car to a Whole New Level ing from MIT; and Ioannis Yannas, professor of poly Berkeley. Building E51-376, MIT mer science and engineering at MIT. www.codondevices.com www.mitforumcambridge. www.orthomimetics.com org/DigMediaSIG.html Sensing a Market A technology transfer company has signed an agree January 31 Power Boost 2007 CSBi Symposium A company that makes batteries based on MIT tech ment with an MIT professor to commercialize a blood Kresge Auditorium, MIT nology has received a $15 million contract to develop monitoring device. Competitive Technologies, of lithium-iron-phosphate battery technology. A123 Sys Fairfield, CT, signed the deal with Rahul Sarpeshkar, csbi.mit.edu/events/ tems, of Watertown, MA, was awarded the 36-month associate professor of electrical engineering and annualsymposium/2007 contract by the U.S. Department of Energy and the computer science. U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, which comprises The device the company plans to bring to market DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor, and General Motors. is an ultra-low-power pulse oximeter that can be used The goal is to develop a cost-effective, high-power for wireless, remote monitoring. Pulse oximeters have battery that is tolerant of rough environments, such been used for more than 20 years to measure the as car engines. Such a battery would be used in future amount of oxygen in a patient’s bloodstream; they hybrid-electric vehicles, which use energy from brak work by shining light through a patient’s fingertip and ing to produce electricity that runs an electric motor. measuring how much of it is absorbed. Sarpeshkar’s The consortium is working to develop batteries that design uses a novel photoreceptor to make that mea store energy not only for hybrid cars but also for surement. Its compact circuit design uses an order of hydrogen-fuel-cell and electric vehicles. magnitude less power than current devices, so it can The company was cofounded in 2001 by Yet-Ming run on a battery. This makes it possible to use the Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics in MIT’s device for long-term remote monitoring. Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Sarpeshkar is head of the Analog Very Large Scale Ric Fulop, a fellow at MIT’s Sloan School of Manage Integration and Biological Systems Group. The group ment; and Bart Riley, now vice president of research combines research into neurology with analog elec and development. It has raised $62 million in three tronics and is working on such bioelectronic devices rounds of financing. as a bionic ear—a low-power cochlear implant. www.a123systems.com www.competitivetech.net www.technologyreview.com/insider 5 The list

$1K Warm-up Awards

MIT’s annual $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is designed to encourage students to start companies. Since 1989, more than 80 companies, including Akamai, have been launched by teams in the competition. The contest started off in the fall semester with the $1K Warm-up. Of 138 entrants, 10 teams were chosen to move on. Each received $1,000 cash and will now compete in the $100K.

Category Company Contact Project

Information Borisville Boris Iyutin OpenContentMart, a forum for interactive online tutorials, ques technology [email protected] tionnaires, stories, and textbooks. Authors can sell their material for online publishing or release it into the public domain and receive voluntary donations.

Biotechnology Hemetrics David Kaufman A portable, handheld device designed to help emergency respond Development david.Kaufman@ ers determine quickly whether a patient is dehydrated; initially hemetrics.com targeted to the chronically dehydrated elder population.

Tiny tech MAD Helen Chuang A multilayer coating that provides timed release of active agents, Nanolayers [email protected] such as antibiotics and growth factors applied to orthopedic implants, fragrances in consumer goods, or fertilizers applied to seeds.

Consumer RadioSherpa Joshua Lifton Real-time program guide and search engine for broadcast radio; products [email protected] works with Internet broadcasts or specially equipped radios.

Services RemesaTel Jose Dominguez-Caballero International money transfers and payments via text messaging. [email protected]

Social Bagazo Amy Banzaert Concentrated cooking fuel made from agricultural waste prod [email protected] ucts; designed to reduce the use of wood and dung fires, which cause indoor pollution in Third World countries.

Energy AeroVortex Sandeep Beri New turbine technology aimed at efficiently harvesting wind Mills [email protected] power in low-wind areas.

Future LightFace Dan Walsh Customizable panels for high-end architectural lighting; made technology [email protected] of organic LEDs printed on flexible substrates, with 10 times the lifetime of current devices.

Medical devices Picosense John Ho PNUT, the Personal Nut Ultra-trace Tracker, a portable sen [email protected] sor for those with peanut allergies. It detects trace amounts of peanut contamination in food and on surfaces.

Development Solar Turbine Sorin Grama A turbine generator powered by solar energy to produce not Group [email protected] only electricity but also heating and cooling for Third World countries.

www.technologyreview.com/insider 6 EDITION

ILP REPORT: TOP STORY

CONTENTS

7 IT CONFERENCE IT Conference Celebrates New, Agile Technologies CELEBRATES NEW, April’s conference features Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 Laptop, Rodney Brooks on AI, plus AGILE TECHNOLOGIES the latest on robotics, agile modeling, networking, Internet security, location-based services 9 SUSTAINABILITY and more. CONFERENCE SEEKS by Eric Brown TO MAKE “CLEAN AND GREEN” POSSIBLE AND From the research lab to the boardroom, there is no more Jerrold Grochow, Vice President of Information Ser- ECONOMICAL sought-after quality than agility. Global marketplaces and vices and Technology (IS&T) at MIT, will explain how networks demand quick responses to multiplying, yet IS&T provides innovative management techniques for ever-shrinking, windows of opportunity. The 2007 MIT enterprise computing in order to supply IT services to Director, ILP and Office Information Technology Conference, to be held on April over 20,000 demanding clients. For a longer range view, of Corporate Relations Karl F. Koster 25-26 at Kresge Auditorium, will show how MIT David D. Clark, CSAIL Senior Research Scientist, will researchers are addressing this challenge with agile new look at the future of the Internet, including potential solu- Managing Editor technologies and business strategies. Presentations will tions for security issues expected to emerge from wide- Michael Lawson cover both long-range projects and near-term technolo- spread mobile and embedded access. Managing Editor, gies that could start disrupting industry in a few years. While computer scientists try to make networks more Japan Edition The morning keynote will feature Nicholas Negro- robust, the MIT Media Laboratory is always there to Carl Accardo ponte, Professor of Media Technology and Chairman make their jobs more challenging with new, innovative Emeritus of the MIT Media Laboratory, discussing a proj- applications. Alex Paul Pentland, Toshiba Professor of Associate Editors ect that could have a major impact on both consumer Media Arts and Science at the Media Lab, will demon- Lynn Vitiello Sara M. Egan technology and the development of emerging nations. strate how wireless technologies can automate and enrich Building on the strengths of an innovative low-cost com- the analysis of employee interactions. His Sensible Orga- Production/Distribution puter, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) hopes to jump-start nizations project helps companies analyze productivity Michael Lawson a technological awakening in the developing world. As by using proximity-aware communications badges and Lynn Vitiello chairman of OLPC, Negroponte will present the $100 other “social sensors” to identify who employees are MIT CAMPUS Laptop as an example of how ingenuity can be applied to speaking to and how gestures and other behavioral cues MIT Industrial Liaison the low-end market without sacrificing essential func- affect business interactions. Program tionality. Tech manufacturers, claims Negroponte, are To adopt innovative applications like Sensible Orga- 77 Massachusetts Avenue, fearful of the commodity pricing brought on by Moore’s nizations, companies need to establish considerable E38-400 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 Law, and therefore add features to justify higher prices. structural — and cultural — groundwork. The following Tel 617-253-2691, As a result, he adds, “many of us now have bloated lap- stories from four additional conference speakers suggest Fax 617-258-0796 tops and cell phones, sometimes unreliable and slow that building a solid foundation is a necessity for agility ilp-www.mit.edu because of all these features.” and innovation. Japan The afternoon keynote by MIT’s Computer Science Digitally Augmenting the City MIT Industrial Liaison and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Director, Program Like Sensible Organizations, the SENSEable City Lab Rodney Brooks, will discuss his vision of Artificial Intel- Sakurai Building, JF ligence and establish some key goals for robotics. These uses wireless communications and location tracking to 5, Kojimachi 4-chome include improving visual object recognition, spoken lan- analyze social patterns. Yet SENSEable City, part of Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0083, Japan guage, manual dexterity and social understanding. “Sig- MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, focuses instead on public urban environments, where nificant advances in any one of them will open wide the Tel 011 81 3 3262-2240, gates for a deluge of new applications, companies, and privacy concerns are more pressing. Fax 011 81 3 3239-4136 changes in our world,” says Brooks. At the conference, Professor Carlo Ratti, Director, email: [email protected] Another important quality for robots, adaptability, will discuss his Lab’s long-term Wiki City project, which will be discussed by CSAIL Professor Daniela L. Rus. is based on last year’s Real Time Rome project. Here, Get the Ratti and his collaborators used analysis of aggregate cell Whether searching for survivors in a bombed building or MIT news exploring Mars, her self-reconfiguring lattice robots can phone traffic to generate traffic maps. With cell-phone change shape to adjust to changing terrain. Other presen- locations mapped anonymously at regular intervals, you need tations of near-term technology include CSAIL’s William Roman city planners could see the pulse of the city in real to know T. Freeman discussing his computational photography time. Wiki City builds upon this idea, envisioning an research, including anti-blur algorithms and a “motion interactive, digitally augmented city that would also inte- grate location-based services, WiFi-based wikis and Free Ilp microscope,” and Devavrat Shah, Assistant Professor in Member Sign-up. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), environmental sensor input. reporting on a new parametrized class of simple, distrib- “How do we build new cities that combine digital and Click here to visit: uted message-passing algorithms for resolving network concrete forms?” says Ratti. “We’re exploring how to www.technologyreview.com/insider/ ilp/ contention disputes. capture and process time- and location-sensitive data and build a real-time control system for a city.” www.technologyreview.com/insider/ilp CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE � 7 EDITION

One of Wiki City’s applications is social networking, new approaches toward incentives, governance, training PUBLICATIONS AND which is the goal of the Lab’s iFIND opt-in, friend-find- and decision-making, and companies must persuade local LECTURES ing service. Now available for download, iFIND is a map- managers to surrender autonomy on core processes so based, instant messaging application that uses linked they can focus on innovation in localized customer ser- “CONTROLLING WiFi networks to determine location. iFIND answers the vice. “It sometimes takes three or four years per stage,” FOR THE IMPACT OF growing question: How do you find your friends and col- says Weill. “The good news is there are measurable busi- VARIABLE LIQUIDITY IN COMMERCIAL leagues when they’re wandering around campus? ness benefits to be earned at each stage.” REAL ESTATE PRICE iFIND protects privacy with a completely opt-in, CISR is now identifying the factors that characterize INDICES” encrypted system. Users decide who can view their loca- agile companies. One quality is “IT savviness,” which by J. Fisher, D. Gatzlaff, tion information, and no central authority can track an requires that a company not only be creative with IT D. Geltner, D. Haurin, MIT individual’s location. Future plans call for adding map- resources, but also know when not to be. “You don’t want Center for Real Estate ping layers and location-specific wikis and scaling up for innovation centralized,” says Weill. “There should be citywide networks. “We’re exploring how to let users strong governance in the core and little variability.” http://web.mit.edu/cre/ decide how much to reveal and to whom,” says Ratti. research/credl/pdf/ “With MIT’s techno-enthusiast community and pervasive Alloy: Lightweight Agile Modeling FGGH_Variable_Liq_ wireless coverage, it could provide a highly relevant case In software, unlike business, one can innovate in the core REE.pdf study.” – but very carefully. As requirements grow more complex, bugs – along with more serious gaps and flaws – A Vote of Confidence have a more disastrous impact. CSAIL Professor Daniel PERSPECTIVES ON The issue of “how much to reveal and to whom” also Jackson, has addressed this issue with Alloy, one of a new FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE challenges Ronald Rivest, the founder of RSA Security, class of ‘lightweight formal methods’ for software mod- Edited by J. Feller, B. who will report on his research and its progress towards eling. Alloy combines a supercharged, automated SAT Fitzgerald, S. Hissam, improving the security and usability of voting systems. analyzer with a modeling language that provides first- K. Lakhani, MIT Press, Rivest, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of EECS, order logics for expressing designs and properties. It’s [Forthcoming March proposes that it’s still too early for all-digital voting tech- not only adept at catching bugs, but at an early stage can 2007] nology. “Building secure, usable voting systems is a sur- reveal whether a project has major flaws that might oth- prisingly hard problem,” he says. “Much more research erwise go undetected for months. http://mitpress.mit. is needed.” Relatively few developers use modeling packages, edu/catalog/item/default. Rivest will discuss “end-to-end auditable” voting sys- says Jackson, and the pressure to produce is intense. “Pro- asp?ttype=2&tid=11216 tems that allow each voter to confirm that their vote was ductivity is typically measured by how many lines of code counted, and allow anyone to confirm the tally’s correct- you deliver,” he says. “There’s no reward for sharing code “MASTER ness. Rivest’s ThreeBallot system not only achieves this or writing succinctly, and there’s a deep reluctance to PRODUCTION goal, but is the first to do so without cryptography. spend a month thinking about the problem. There’s often SCHEDULE STABILITY a kind of fog of confusion and massive amounts of wish- UNDER CONDITIONS A Foundation for Business Agility ful thinking. Developers exhaust their attention over OF FINITE CAPACITY” After years of intensive field work, Peter Weill and the technical problems so they don’t think clearly about fun- by E. W. Schuster, C. MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) damental design questions. Soon you have an incredibly Unahabhokha, S. J. Allen, have concluded that business agility requires more than complicated beast that’s out of control.” MIT Data Center innovative product and customer strategies. First, one Formal modeling methods use mathematical proofs needs to establish a solid foundation. of correctness to help spot errors, but they require con- http://mitdatacenter.org/ LEC20054-14-05R1.pdf “Most companies spend too much time and money siderable expertise. Another solution is agile program- integrating too many ways of processing the same things,” ming, by which teams of programmers quickly develop says Weill, Senior Research Scientist at MIT Sloan code in stages, showing it to clients along the way. This School of Management. “Successful companies like “AN INTRODUCTION TO has its advantages, says Jackson, but it can’t spot all the SEMANTIC MODELING UPS, Citibank and 7-11 Japan, have standardized and problems. Hence, the need for lightweight “agile” model- FOR LOGISTICAL digitized their core processes, enabling them to be more ing. SYSTEMS” agile. It’s difficult to be agile on an unstable platform.” Based on the “model-checking” algorithms used in IC by D. L. Brock, E. W. Weill holds up business agility as the prize for those modeling, Alloy offers a number of innovations that make Schuster, S. J. Allen, P. companies willing to build foundations for effective it faster and easier than traditional modeling. Yet it’s a Kar, MIT Data Center enterprise architectures. Each company must first iden- “ruthless, emotionless critic,” says Jackson, forcing http://mitdatacenter.org/ tify its core processes and operating model and then work developers to slow down and think. “Alloy sits in the through the stages of enterprise architecture maturity. BrockSchusterAllenKar. corner of the room, humbling you whenever you write pdf Many companies have moved from the Business Silos something down,” he says. “But it holds you to a higher stage to Standardized Technology and Optimized Core, standard.” he says, yet few have graduated to Business Modular- ity. April 25-26, 2007 MIT Information Technology Confer- Companies are often tempted to skip a stage, such as ence, Kresge Auditorium, MIT Campus, http://ilp-www. jumping to modularity before core processes are unified, mit.edu/events/IT2007 but this rarely works, says Weill. Each transition requires www.technologyreview.com/insider/ilp 8 EDITION

ILP REPORT PROJECTS, LABS AND Sustainability Conference Seeks to Make “Clean CENTERS MIT CREATES 3D SCAFFOLD FOR and Green” Possible and Economical GROWING STEM CELLS by William Manning Stem cells grew, multiplied and “Sustainable development is development that meets the developed and developing world.” differentiated into brain needs of the present without compromising the ability of “One of the AGS energy pathways initiatives is what cells on a new three- future generations to meet their own needs.” we call the Wells to Wheels program that looks at the issue dimensional scaffold of So said the United Nation’s 1987 Brundtland Com- of mobility and greener automobiles, an area where a lot tiny protein fragments designed to be more like mission – formally, the World Commission on Environ- of work is being done at MIT by John Heywood and oth- a living body than any ment and Development (WCED) -- chaired by Gro ers.” Marks reports. “We’re looking into hydrogen-pow- other cell culture system. Harlem Brundtland. ered cars, for example, but believe they are still a long [MIT News Office, Twenty years later, sad to say, the need to tackle a wide way off. In the near-term, we have to evaluate an evolving December 27, 2006]. range of issues relating to environmental sustainability mix of technologies, such as more efficient internal com- — in such matters as energy, agricultural practices, and bustion engines and hybrid cars, as well as alternate fuels http://web.mit.edu/ clean water — is as crucial as ever. like ethanol. newsoffice/2006/scaffold. That’s why anyone who wants to learn about, or help “Another initiative addresses ‘clean coal’ legislation html set the direction of environmental sustainability in the in Europe and how to put existing and future technologies http://web.mit.edu/lms/ years ahead, should hop a flight and be in Barcelona, in place to create more sustainable low carbon power www/ Spain, March 18 through 21 in 2007. generation in the next 10 or 15 years using coal. That’s That’s when the Alliance for Global Sustainability’s important. Because a ton of CO2 sent into the atmosphere FLU VACCINE “Pathways To Our Common Future,” the title of this stays there for a long time and contributes to climate SHORTAGES CAN year’s annual conference, takes a look not only at what’s change.” BE AVOIDED, MIT possible in promoting responsible energy development So far the AGS’ energy initiatives have raised $20 ENGINEERS SAY and use and promoting smarter agricultural methods. It million from foundations, the auto companies, govern- With the annual flu also identifies the technologically and politically practi- ments and other sources to fund its work over the next season upon us, vaccines cal measures that can be taken in the near term to advance five years. remain the primary the cause of environmental sustainability. weapons for fighting Clean-Room Chicken in KFC’s Future? influenza outbreaks. Yet, The Energy to Succeed The second AGS initiative is food and water. The organi- there frequently aren’t The Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS) is a col- zation’s funding efforts and research in the area of sus- enough doses to go laboration of four universities, explains David Marks, tainable food and water is just beginning, says Stephen around. co-director of MIT’s Laboratory for Energy and the Envi- Connors, LFEE’s Director of the Analysis Group for One major reason is that ronment (LFEE), who was present at the AGS’ creation. Regional Energy Alternatives, and head of the energy the contracts between The AGS brings together world-class expertise from initiative. The Food and Water program holds much governments and member institutions, including the Massachusetts Insti- promise for creating better methods of production and manufacturers do not tute of Technology, a founding member, as well as the more secure sources for each. provide vaccine makers University of Tokyo, Sweden’s Chalmers University of “In the food and water area, we’re looking at both with enough of a financial Technology, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technol- human needs and demand on one side, and the technology incentive to produce ogy. and social systems around growing food on the other side sufficient doses. Now, Those institutions have joined forces to develop of the equation so we can see how that whole ecosystem MIT researchers and research and education, in collaboration with government works,” Connors points out. colleagues have come and industry, on the challenges of sustainable develop- “With all the instances of mad cow disease and bird up with a new model for contracts they hope ment. flu possibly tainting the food supply and affecting human will benefit both parties By marshalling their intellectual resources in engi- health, for example, research activities in this area are and prevent vaccine neering, social sciences, and natural sciences, the AGS’ more important than ever,” Connors notes. “For instance, shortages. [MIT News members are uniquely positioned to offer not just detailed at last year’s AGS annual meeting in Bangkok I saw an Office, December 27, assessments of technological impacts, but also insights interesting talk by a major Thai poultry producer who 2006]. into the challenges associated with the successful deploy- spoke of essentially raising chickens in clean room envi- ment of those technologies. And in a way that is acces- ronments to prevent the start or spread of disease.” http://web.mit.edu/ sible by all. While raising funds, technological breakthroughs, newsoffice/2006/ “The March conference will focus on two main areas,” and coordination of international efforts can be a chal- influenza.html explains Marks. “ The first is related to sustainable energy lenge, perhaps the biggest obstacle to creating sustainable http://cee.mit.edu/index. pl?id=2375 production and use. That one is farthest along in its fund- and secure energy and food sources may be human ing and research on energy use and security in both the nature. CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE � www.technologyreview.com/insider/ilp 9 EDITION

“It’s a real problem changing people’s behavior when CONFERENCES it comes to conservation and other matters – it’s some- JOIN THE DIALOGUE thing we don’t understand well yet,” Marks observes. JANUARY 19, 2007 “For example, in the United States there is a great fear AT MIT 2007 MIT in Japan of regulation, as it relates to the environment and other Conference areas, and especially a distrust of international regulation, Tokyo, Japan which conjures up black helicopters and other images. http://ilp-www.mit.edu/ There’s a lot of push-back on CO2 regulation here and a Hear how breakthrough events/JPN2007 distrust of techniques like cap-and-trade to control emis- sions even though work at MIT’s Department of Econom- technology will impact your ics and elsewhere shows them to be effective. In some industry. MARCH 29-30, 2007 minds, those kinds of government-sanctioned controls 2007 Achieving Growth suggest the risk of more and bigger government interfer- through Strategic ence in the future.” Learn how business leaders Innovation Conference The other and more compelling behavior consider- are adapting to maintain Brussels, Belgium ation, says Marks, is an economic one. It revolves around the question of making the appropriate investments nec- competitiveness. http://ilp-www.mit.edu/ events/EURO-2007 essary to become carbon-neutral without it affecting an industry or nation’s international competitiveness. To solve that problem means building institutions that plan APRIL 25-26, 2006 and educate societies at all levels in order to build a con- Explore how today’s early-stage 2007 MIT Information sensus on values, goals, and methodologies. There is a innovation could become Technology Conference concern that being more energy efficient will be more tomorrow’s growth engine. Kresge Auditorium, MIT costly but there are ample evidence that it need not be. Campus The are plenty of “win-win” examples at which to point. http://ilp-www.mit.edu/ While the AGS goals are ambitious, and the resources events/IT2007 never enough, the organization’s researchers continue to look for that sweet spot where the recognition of the eco- MAY 9-10, 2007 nomic and social value of being “clean and green” is not 2007 MIT Healthcare only obvious but possible. That will come as an environ- ILP Conference programs feature faculty Industries Conference mental sustainability sensibility is cultivated in people Q&A, industry panels, technology Wong Auditorium, MIT and brought to bear on the design of everything that’s workshops, and a number of formal/ Campus made or grown, by using greener forms of production and informal networking opportunities that more recyclable materials http://ilp-www.mit.edu/ “And that’s why the role of education and universities promote high-caliber dialogue with MIT events/HLTHCR is so important in solving multigenerational problems faculty, researchers, and senior managers like these,” notes Marks. “It starts in grade school with from some of the world’s leading helping a student decide whether to take that science companies. course in the first place and continues on into higher education. These students are our leaders for the future and we must nurture and encourage them now. “The issues the AGS is addressing are interdisciplin- TECHNOLOGY ary problems. And MIT is doing well in creating scientists, in the traditional hard sciences and social sciences, AND THE to create literate graduates, not just narrowly focused majors. They’ll be the ones who can think more broadly CORPORATION and creatively to discover the sustainability solutions on which our future depends.” 2006-2007 Conference Series

Conference information and registration: http://congress. cimne.upc.es/ags_am07 Full agendas, brochures and registration available online at: ilp-www.mit.edu/conferences