[Editors] MIT: New Technologies for Tomorrow's Boom

[Patti Richards]

For more information or to arrange interviews, contact:
Patti Richards, MIT News Office
617.253.8923; prichards at mit.edu

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MIT researchers:
New Technologies for Tomorrow's Boom
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As the economy appears to falter, here's something to keep in mind:  
History is filled with examples of new technologies that have helped  
to usher in more prosperous times. (Case in point: Few people who  
experienced the recession of the early 1990s could have foreseen the  
emergence of the World Wide Web.)

With this in mind, we asked MIT researchers for their thoughts on  
potentially life-altering technologies that lie just around the corner.

See brief versions of some of their answers below; the complete text  
can be found at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/hope- 
horizon-0521.html

Note: All MIT researchers are available for interviews. Please  
contact Patti Richards at 617.253.8923 or prichards at mit.edu to arrange.

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Leslie Bromberg: Using plasma to convert waste to fuel (imagine using  
garden and household waste to make energy).

Rod Brooks: Robots that are practical and affordable.

Neil Gershenfeld: The digitization of fabrication, the consequence of  
which will be personalization -- allowing anyone to make almost  
anything anywhere.

Paula Hammond: Electrochemical energy: The reduction and oxidation of  
materials to either generate energy or to store it.

William J. Mitchell: Rebuilding our cities in "smart" sustainable  
form, with ubiquitous networking that will allow cities to respond  
like intelligent organisms to dynamic changes in the needs of their  
inhabitants.

Phil Sharp: Merging engineering and biology, which will ultimately  
yield better medicines, agriculture and materials.

Michael Strano: Embedding low-cost electronics into almost every  
object that we encounter on a day-to-day basis.

Mehmet Faith Yanik: Significant extension of the human lifespan by  
disease-preventative and tissue-regenerative technologies.

Shuguang Zhang: Low-cost, nanoscale solar cells.

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