The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology has announced five novel research fellows for 2023–2024. The initiative, now in its third year, highlights ways industry and research can work together to drive technology innovation.
Through its partnership with the School of Engineering, Accenture is providing five annual fellowships to graduate students to generate powerful novel insights into the convergence of business and technology that have the potential to transform society. The 2023-24 fellows will pursue research in areas including artificial intelligence, sustainability and robotics.
Accenture scholarship recipients for 2023–2024 are:
Yiyue Luo
Yiyue Luo is a PhD student who is developing pioneering integrations of tactile and haptic sensors, interactive sensors and artificial intelligence, digital manufacturing, and astute wearables. Her work leverages the latest advances in digital manufacturing and artificial intelligence, and the convergence of advanced sensor and actuator mechanisms, scalable digital manufacturing, and emerging computing techniques to create novel sensor and actuator devices that will revolutionize the interactions between humans and their environments. In previous projects, Luo has developed sensor-based garments, including socks, gloves, and vests, as well as a workflow for the computational design and digital manufacturing of supple textile pneumatic actuators. With support from an Accenture Fellowship, she will expand her work on the integration of sensor and actuator devices and explore the development of haptic devices that simulate tactile cues captured by tactile sensors. Her ultimate goal is to build a scalable, textile-based, closed-loop human-machine interface. Luo’s research has the potential to advance breakthrough applications in astute textiles, healthcare, artificial and virtual reality, human-machine interaction, and robotics.
Zanele’s soup is a PhD candidate whose research explores foundational models, a class of models that underpin transformative general-purpose technologies (GPTs) such as GPT4. The Accenture fellowship will enable Munyikwa to conduct research to illuminate the current and potential impact of foundational models (including enormous language models) on the work and tasks typical of “high-skilled” knowledge workers in industries such as marketing, legal services, and medicine, where foundational models are expected to have a significant economic and societal impact. The primary goal of her project is to observe the impact of extending AI to tasks such as copywriting and long-form writing. A secondary goal is to examine two key ways in which foundational models are driving the convergence of inventive and technology industries: lowering the cost of content generation and enabling the development of tools and platforms for education and training. Munyikwa’s work has crucial implications for the employ of foundational models in a range of domains, from healthcare and education to legal services, business, and technology.
Michelle Vaccaro is a PhD candidate in Social Engineering Systems whose research explores human-AI collaboration to develop a deeper understanding of AI-based technologies (including ChatGPT and DALL-E), assess their performance and evolution, and guide their development toward societally beneficial applications such as climate change mitigation. The Accenture Fellowship will support Vaccaro’s ongoing work toward two key goals: identifying synergies between humans and AI-based software to aid design human-AI systems that better address persistent problems than existing approaches; and exploring applications of human-AI collaboration to predicting technological change, particularly in renewable energy technologies. By integrating the historically distinct fields of AI, systems engineering, and cognitive science with a broad range of industries, technical domains, and societal applications, Vaccaro’s work has the potential to advance individual and collective productivity and creativity across all of these areas.
Chonghuan Wang is a PhD candidate in computational science and engineering whose research uses statistical learning, econometric theory, and experimental design to create effective, reliable, and sustainable field experiments across a variety of domains. In his current work, Wang applies statistical learning techniques such as online learning and bandit theory to test the effectiveness of novel treatments, vaccinations, and healthcare interventions. With support from the Accenture Fellowship, he will design experiments with the specific goal of understanding the trade-off between patient well-being and the accuracy of treatment estimates. The results of this research could aid save lives and stem disease outbreaks during pandemics like Covid-19. The benefits of improved experimental design and high-quality data collection extend far beyond healthcare; for example, these tools can aid companies optimize user engagement, test the impact of pricing, and boost the employ of platforms and services. Wang’s research has the invigorating potential to leverage statistical learning, econometric theory, and experimental design for stronger companies and greater social good.
Aaron Michael West Jr. is a PhD candidate whose research aims to advance our understanding of human motor control and robotics. His work aims to advance technologies for rehabilitation and prosthetic devices, as well as improve robotic dexterity. His previous work has yielded valuable insights into the human ability to extract information solely from visual displays. In particular, he has shown that humans can estimate stiffness based solely on visual observation of movement. These insights could accelerate the development of software applications with the same capabilities (e.g., using machine learning methods applied to video data) and could enable roboticists to develop improved movement control so that robotic intent is perceived by humans. The Accenture fellowship will enable West to continue this work, as well as novel research on the functionality of the human hand, to aid design a prosthetic hand that better replicates human dexterity. By advancing our understanding of human bio- and neuromechanics, West’s work has the potential to support major advances in robotics and rehabilitation technologies that will have profound impacts on human health and well-being.