MIT Mechanical Engineering

MIT engineers have developed a tiny ingestible sensor, smaller than a blueberry, that can measure temperature from inside the body. The device offers a minimally invasive means to continuously monitor core body temperature, providing critical insights into a range of health conditions.

Professor Giovanni Traverso and Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s provost and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, are the senior authors of the new study. Postdoc Saransh Sharma Saransh Sharma is the lead author.

https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/tiny-ingestible-sensor-can-measure-temperature-inside-body

In its first year, the Initiative for New Manufacturing has worked across research, workforce development, and industry engagement to help accelerate new manufacturing technologies and their real-world deployment. The Institute-wide effort, which has strong ties to MechE, aims to catalyze innovation in manufacturing and drive productivity growth across the country. https://tinyurl.com/3weckhuw

📸: Jim Barbere

Congratulations to Professor Cullen Buie, who received a 2026 Gordon Y. Billard Award, an Institute award given annually to faculty, staff, or an MIT-affiliated individual who has performed special service of outstanding merit.

The MIT Excellence Awards + Collier Medal acknowledge the extraordinary efforts made by members of the MIT community toward fulfilling the goals, values, and mission of the Institute.

https://hr.mit.edu/recognition/excellence/recipients/2026-recipients

Projects by Professors Kripa Varanasi, Asegun Henry, and Gang Chen received grants from The MIT Climate Project for a Critical Cooling initiative last year. Among the ideas studied were low-cost personal cooling and emissions-free air conditioning. All of the projects have showed promise, with the researchers now exploring ways to further develop their concepts.

https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/innovative-projects-explore-ways-deal-extreme-heat

Engineers in Professor Xuanhe Zhao's lab, together with collaborators from Professor Qifa Zhou’s group at the University of Southern California (USC), have developed a noninvasive pacemaker that stimulates the heart using ultrasound. The design could one day provide a surgery-free alternative to traditional cardiac implants. 📸: Courtesy of the researchers

https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/ultrasound-based-pacemaker-noninvasively-steadies-heart

Connecting younger students to robotics is one of the main goals of FIRSTxMIT, a new MIT student club launched at the beginning of the last academic year. Members are all alumni of programs offered by FIRST Robotics (FIRST), a nonprofit that aims to inspire interest in STEM for K-12 students worldwide through team-based robotics programs and competitions.

FIRST has deep roots at MIT. Inventor Dean Kamen collaborated with legendary MechE Professor Woodie Flowers to establish the competition in 1992. Flowers was a pioneer in hands-on engineering design education. 📸s: Perry Han

Via MIT Division of Graduate and Undergraduate Education: https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/ambassadors-stem

Founded by Peter Godart ’15, SM ’19, PhD ’21, Found Industries has developed technologies for extracting critical metals and making fuel out of aluminum. With support from the Department of Energy, the company is hoping to use their electrochemical gallium extraction technology to create a new domestic supply chain for gallium (a critical material in the defense, semiconductor, and energy sectors) and a host of other important metals. 📸: Courtesy of Found Industries

https://tinyurl.com/4p6m6ckc

Today, in honor of , learn how a collaborative project involving researchers at MIT and the University of Maine Darling Marine Center aims to protect marine life like oysters, coral, and plankton by using electricity to reduce ocean acidity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQWU5AVROu8

A new approach developed in MechE's The 77 Lab uses computer vision to assess children with and create optimal treatment paths. The integrated artificial intelligence framework, which is designed to automate the assessment of gross motor function through the use of standard smartphone videos, seeks to remove some of the barriers clinicians face in making assessments.

Eran Beeri Bamani, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Hermano Igo Krebs, principal research scientist, both pictured, are the paper's authors, along with MechE Postdoctoral Associate Joao Buzzatto.

https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/new-approach-uses-computer-vision-assess-children-cerebral-palsy-optimal-treatment-paths

📸: Tony Pulsone