News + Notes from the Media Lab: December 2024
Happy Holidays from Media Lab Director Dava Newman!
"As 2024 comes to a close," Director Newman writes, "I want to thank our incredible Media Lab community—including member companies, generous donors, faculty, researchers, students, and staff—for advancing solutions for healthier minds and bodies, inspiring creativity, designing smarter AI, building resilient digital societies, and envisioning sustainable futures. Your passion and imagination made it all possible. In 2025, we look forward to celebrating the 40th anniversary of the MIT Media Lab—a milestone honoring four decades of groundbreaking innovation, academic excellence, and societal impact. Together, we will continue this legacy of tackling humanity's greatest challenges and exploring new horizons to shape a better future."
Celebrating Our Newest Members
At the MIT Media Lab, we push boundaries to explore, prototype, and invent the technologies, systems, and experiences that shape tomorrow. In 2024, we are thrilled to welcome 14 innovative companies spanning industries from finance to sustainable living, and from advanced electronics to entertainment, from around the globe. Together, we will embark on a journey of discovery and collaboration, driving transformative change for a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.
Bangkok Bank | 科勒公司 | 仁宝 | MITRE | DeRUCCI International Holdings Ltd. | M7 Innovations | DSTA | Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. | GID | Pioneer Material Precision (PMP Tech Inc.) | HP Inc. | SK ?? | Kenvue | 索尼 Corporation
Member Company Spotlight
We were thrilled to hear DeRUCCI International Holdings Ltd., one of our member companies, get a shoutout on NPR's Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me! for their innovative smart pillow, which uses machine learning and embedded motors to nudge you if you start snoring.
It’s always fun to see how our members are shaping the future in creative and impactful ways, and consider how we can help them revolutionize their industries.
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In the Media
In an interview with the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, Media Lab Director Dava Newman talks about how we collaborate with our member companies: “Our members are literally at the table with us, telling us some of their hardest challenges and problems,” she says. “Our role is thinking about the future, maybe five or 10 years or longer out, getting out of the comfort zone, taking risks, and designing for the future we want to realize. We like to start by prototyping. We are a prototype shop. We are flexible, we have a very short turnaround time for academia, and we love to work on a really fast-paced cycle with our industry members. Give us your hard problems, come spend time with us, work with us! Help us imagine that just future, that creative future, that future that we know is within reach. We can only attain that future by working across disciplines with our industry, government, and philanthropic collaborators.”?
In The New Yorker, Rivka Galchen explores the new surgical procedures and bionic technologies being developed by Media Lab Professor Hugh Herr and his colleagues at institutions including MIT, 美国哈佛大学 , and Brigham and Women's Hospital . These advances are enabling patients to control prosthetic limbs with their own nervous systems. The results, Professor Herr says, are “more than I had expected in my wildest dreams.”?
MIT Media Lab member organizations collaborate with the brightest minds to craft the innovations that will define the future of industry + society. To learn more visit: media.mit.edu/posts/membership-levels or email [email protected]
Cover image: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash