Research

Daniela Rus’s dream is to imbue the power of robotics with the wisdom of humanity. She runs MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. As part of his ongoing series on the promise and perils of AI, Globe Ideas Editor Brian Bergstein talks to Rus about her new book “The Heart and the Chip.” She says robots won’t just do our chores and work in our factories; they can teach us how to hit tennis balls like Serena Williams and defy gravity like Iron Man. She says your car won’t just drive you around — it might also be a friend. 

Imagine a slime-like robot that can seamlessly change its shape to squeeze through narrow spaces, which could be deployed inside the human body to remove an unwanted item.

CSAIL Director & Liquid  AI Co-Founder Professor Daniela Rus has been named to the third annual Tech Power Players 50, a list of the most influential – and interesting – people in the New England technology scene, as ranked by The Boston Globe’s business journalists and an external advisory.

The allure of whales has stoked human consciousness for millennia, casting these ocean giants as enigmatic residents of the deep seas. From the biblical Leviathan to Herman Melville's formidable Moby Dick, whales have been central to mythologies and folklore. And while cetology, or whale science, has improved our knowledge of these marine mammals in the past century in particular, studying whales has remained a formidable a challenge.