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It’s Day 95 in MIT’s 150 days of sesquicentennial celebration, and all thoughts turn to the evolution of computer science and MIT’s pivotal role in that history. As Victor Zue puts it so succinctly, “Computers sure have changed.” They are even invading biology, and President Hockfield (who is also a Professor of Neuroscience) sees this history as another branch in the tradition, initiated by William Barton Rogers, of education bringing the “useful arts” (or as we now say, technology) to bear on the economic development of the United States.

Tom Leighton asserts that “To say computers are transforming everything is an understatement.” Leighton offers a brief lesson in theoretical computer science, defining an algorithm through the example of searching for the prime factors of a given number N, and identifying the key follow-up questions: Can you prove it works? How long does it take? How good is it? Then the big question: Does theoretical computer science matter? Leighton cites some powerful examples of the field’s impact on our lives, from encryption to Google’s page-rank algorithm to the content delivery system of

Personal reminiscence and professional observations share the stage in the second panel of this symposium on computation.

As a boy, former MIT President Charles (Chuck) Vest daydreamed about going on a rocket ship to the moon, having a tiny TV, and obtaining a Dick Tracy wristwatch. While he never made it to the moon (though he knows those who have), he has fulfilled other wishes, thanks to “amazing developments in computing:” mobile devices he can carry in his pocket that combine watch, TV and many more functions.

Vest was on hand for the dawn of the digital revolution, and recalls learning to program in Fortran in college in 1961, and describes a computer with 8 bits of memory held in a mercury vapor tube. He developed a recurring nightmare after many nights carrying boxes full of punched cards to the University of Michigan computer center, and worrying about “one little bug ruining the whole program.” He held onto the cards until he moved to Cambridge in 1990.

While working as a young faculty member in the field of optical holography, Vest said his team became the “nth group to develop the idea

Moore’s law and energy efficiency emerge as themes in these two lectures on past and future progress in microprocessors and robotics.

Back in the old days, recalls Rodney Brooks, people were not allowed near computers, because the smoke from human cigarettes might damage delicate machinery. Then humans had to steer clear of robots, lest they come out on the losing end of an encounter with a hulking machine limb. But following the explosion of PC and portable computing technology, the last 10 years have brought robots into close proximity with people. Brooks says more than nine thousand robots now serve in the U.S. military, and six million work in human homes -- including his own line at iRobot.

Brooks attributes this proliferation of AI aides to “IT exponentials that beget other exponentials.” Leaps in processing speed enormously aided in the development of essential robotics systems, such as vision, machine learning, wireless networking, and speech understanding. He shows a robot, “The Cart,” from Stanford’s AI lab circa 1979. The device relied on a giant mainframe (shared with the music department), and moved 20 meters in six hours. By 2005, Stanford’s AI

Three “young Turks” of computation science, in the words of moderator John Guttag, discuss recent, and quite varied, research.

The traditional approach to characterizing neurological diseases in large populations assumes “there is an average brain that represents us all,” says
Polina Golland, and that we are all “noisy” iterations of this central type. But in fact there is such great variability of brains in a normal population that it is hard to catch the “subtle differences induced by varied diseases.” So Golland has “put the problem upside down,” and using neuroimaging, developed models for the developing brain. Using 400 brain images of subjects from 18-96 years of age, Golland has discovered three templates that correspond to the young, middle-aged and older brain. Since her algorithms are “blind to the ages,” older subjects might possess an anatomically younger brain, with lots of gray matter and smaller ventricles. Structures in the older brains correlate in clinical populations to a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, and Golland believes her methodology of linking brain structure to function will help in diagnostics and in surgery.

Dina Katabi may have found an answer to the annoying

In three presentations that look back to digital-age milestones, and glimpse ahead to what may come next, speakers share some previously undisclosed stories, great enthusiasms, and a few concerns.

Nicholas Negroponte tells a few “dirty secrets” about the start of the MIT Media Lab, including the fact that Negroponte and co-founder Jerome Wiesner wanted to admit people “who wouldn’t normally apply to MIT, let alone get in,” and that the lab was viewed by top administrators as a “salon de refuses:” a refuge for brilliant researchers such as Seymour Papert, “who were not welcome” elsewhere.

After heading up the lab for 25 years, Negroponte wanted to end his peripatetic, fund-raising duties and start a project of his own. Having witnessed on a small scale the transformative power of computer technology in developing countries, Negroponte started One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a program that has now placed approximately three million laptop computers in the hands of children in 40 countries. Some nations have implemented the program more successfully than others, he admits: Libya’s Qaddafi just toyed with adopting OLPC, but the president of Uruguay “decided it would be his legacy.” Negroponte shows photos

Bill Wong of Electronic Design magazine talks with Doug Orrin of Mechanical Simulation about the CarSim, TruckSim and BikeSim simulation software that is highly configurable, collecting extremely detailed metric s from design vartiables.

Hosted by: Bill Wong Videography by: Terry Knight Edited by: Terry Knight

Bill Wong of Electronic Design magazine talks with Thomas Dougherty of Monolith Engines about a two and four cylinder single-stroke opposed piston engines and the technology that makes them work.

Hosted by: Bill Wong Videography by: Terry Knight Edited by: Terry Knight

Bill Borgia, Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Lockheed Martin, gives us the details on their latest unique creation: a small UAV with a design inspired by a samara, the seed from a maple tree. The Samarai has only two moving parts and weighs less than half a pound. At AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2011, the Samarai debuted and demonstrated vertical takeoff and landing, stable hover, and on-board video streaming.

Hosted by: Bill Wong Videography by: Curtis Ellzey Edited by: Curtis Ellzey

The Skate UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) from Aurora Flight Sciences is constructed from Expanded PolyPropelene (EPP) foam to be rugged, lightweight, and back-packable - it folds up quickly and easily for storage, and can be re-assembled in less than two minutes, ready for VTOL and fixed wing flight.

Hosted by: Bill Wong Videography by: Curtis Ellzey Edited by: Curtis Ellzey

The Maveric UAV from Prioria Robotics is constructed of rugged advanced composite materials and a bendable wing design that allows it to slide into a 6-inch diameter tube for storage. The wings spring out when removed or launched from the tube and give the Maveric quick-launch capability. The design also acts as biological camouflage - when in flight the Maveric resembles a large black bird.

Hosted by: Bill Wong Videography by: Curtis Ellzey Edited by: Curtis Ellzey