The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology has chosen three new analysis tasks that can obtain help from the initiative. The analysis tasks purpose to speed up progress in assembly complicated societal wants via new enterprise convergence insights in expertise and innovation.
Established in MIT’s School of Engineering and now in its third yr, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative is furthering its mission to deliver collectively technological specialists from throughout enterprise and academia to share insights and be taught from each other. Recently, Thomas W. Malone, the Patrick J. McGovern (1959) Professor of Management, joined the initiative as its first-ever school lead. The analysis tasks relate to 3 of the initiative’s key focus areas: sustainability, digital well being, and the way forward for work.
“The solutions these research teams are developing have the potential to have tremendous impact,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “They embody the initiative’s focus on advancing data-driven research that addresses technology and industry convergence.”
“The convergence of science and technology driven by advancements in generative AI, digital twins, quantum computing, and other technologies makes this an especially exciting time for Accenture and MIT to be undertaking this joint research,” says Kenneth Munie, senior managing director at Accenture Strategy, Life Sciences. “Our three new research projects focusing on sustainability, digital health, and the future of work have the potential to help guide and shape future innovations that will benefit the way we work and live.”
The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative constitution venture researchers are described beneath.
Accelerating the journey to web zero with industrial clusters
Jessika Trancik is a professor on the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). Trancik’s analysis examines the dynamic prices, efficiency, and environmental impacts of vitality techniques to tell local weather coverage and speed up useful and equitable expertise innovation. Trancik’s venture goals to establish how industrial clusters can allow corporations to derive larger worth from decarbonization, probably making corporations extra keen to spend money on the clear vitality transition.
To meet the formidable local weather objectives which have been set by nations around the globe, rising greenhouse gasoline emissions tendencies have to be quickly reversed. Industrial clusters — geographically co-located or otherwise-aligned teams of corporations representing a number of industries — account for a good portion of greenhouse gasoline emissions globally. With main vitality customers “clustered” in proximity, industrial clusters present a possible platform to scale low-carbon options by enabling the aggregation of demand and the coordinated funding in bodily vitality provide infrastructure.
In addition to Trancik, the analysis crew engaged on this venture will embrace Aliza Khurram, a postdoc in IDSS; Micah Ziegler, an IDSS analysis scientist; Melissa Stark, world vitality transition companies lead at Accenture; Laura Sanderfer, technique consulting supervisor at Accenture; and Maria De Miguel, technique senior analyst at Accenture.
Eliminating childhood weight problems
Anette “Peko” Hosoi is the Neil and Jane Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering. A standard theme in her work is the elemental research of form, kinematic, and rheological optimization of organic techniques with purposes to the emergent area of soppy robotics. Her venture will use each information from current research and artificial information to create a return-on-investment (ROI) calculator for childhood weight problems interventions in order that corporations can establish earlier returns on their funding past lowered health-care prices.
Childhood weight problems is simply too prevalent to be solved by a single firm, business, drug, software, or program. In addition to the bodily and emotional affect on youngsters, society bears a price via extra well being care spending, misplaced workforce productiveness, poor college efficiency, and elevated household trauma. Meaningful options require a number of organizations, representing totally different elements of society, working along with a typical understanding of the issue, the financial advantages, and the return on funding. ROI is especially tough to defend for any single group as a result of funding and return may be separated by a few years and contain uneven investments, returns, and allocation of threat. Hosoi’s venture will think about the incentives for a specific entity to spend money on applications with a view to scale back childhood weight problems.
Hosoi will probably be joined by graduate college students Pragya Neupane and Rachael Kha, each of IDSS, as effectively a crew from Accenture that features Kenneth Munie, senior managing director at Accenture Strategy, Life Sciences; Kaveh Safavi, senior managing director in Accenture Health Industry; and Elizabeth Naik, world well being and public service analysis lead.
Generating revolutionary organizational configurations and algorithms for coping with the issue of post-pandemic employment
Thomas Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern (1959) Professor of Management on the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. His analysis focuses on how new organizations may be designed to make the most of the chances offered by info expertise. Malone will probably be joined on this venture by John Horton, the Richard S. Leghorn (1939) Career Development Professor on the MIT Sloan School of Management, whose analysis focuses on the intersection of labor economics, market design, and knowledge techniques. Malone and Horton’s venture will look to reshape the way forward for work with the assistance of classes discovered within the wake of the pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a significant disrupter of labor and employment, and it isn’t in any respect apparent how governments, companies, and different organizations ought to handle the transition to a fascinating state of employment because the pandemic recedes. Using pure language processing algorithms akin to GPT-4, this venture will look to establish new ways in which corporations can use AI to higher match candidates to vital jobs, create new kinds of jobs, assess ability coaching wanted, and establish interventions to assist embrace ladies and different teams whose employment was disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
In addition to Malone and Horton, the analysis crew will embrace Rob Laubacher, affiliate director and analysis scientist on the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, and Kathleen Kennedy, government director on the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and senior director at MIT Horizon. The crew may even embrace Nitu Nivedita, managing director of synthetic intelligence at Accenture, and Thomas Hancock, information science senior supervisor at Accenture.