Electrical engineering and electronics

New mathematical framework formalizes oddball programming techniquesLoop perforation — speeding up programs by skipping instructions — is just one method that gets rigorous mathematical treatment in a new paper.

L. Rafael Reif selected as MIT’s 17th presidentAs provost since 2005, the president-elect has inspired innovation and played a critical role in the financial stewardship of the Institute.

The elusive capacity of networksCalculating the total capacity of a data network is a notoriously difficult problem, but information theorists are beginning to make some headway.

In search of new ways of producing nano-materialsKong’s research focuses on how to make and control novel forms of thin-film carbon.

Thwarting the cleverest attackersSavvy hackers can steal a computer’s secrets by timing its data storage transactions or measuring its power use. New research shows how to stop them.

MITx: What the students thinkFrom Buenos Aires to Honolulu to Montreal, a virtual community grows up around the online initiative’s prototype course.

Algorithmic incentivesA new twist on pioneering work done by MIT cryptographers almost 30 years ago could lead to better ways of structuring contracts.

Lynch named Athena LecturerProfessor honored for advances in distributed systems that enable dependable Internet and wireless network applications.

Their own devicesMIT’s Medical Electronic Device Realization Center aims to connect microelectronics with new health‑care tools.

Sensing when the brain is under pressureNew monitoring strategy forgoes surgery, could help doctors treat patients with head injuries.

Del Alamo is awarded 2012 Intel Outstanding Researcher Award in Emerging Research Devices

Chips as mini InternetsThe data-routing techniques that undergird the Internet could increase the efficiency of multicore chips while lowering their power requirements.

Anant Agarwal named director of new unit to advance MITxInstructor of inaugural 6.002x course will step down as CSAIL director.

Letter to the community on appointment of Open Learning Enterprise director

Video: The Paradiso SynthesizerMedia Lab associate professor’s massive modular synthesizer now on exhibit in the MIT Museum.

Fiber laser points to woven 3-D displaysA fiber that can emit light along its length in any direction may herald flexible 3-D displays and medical tools that activate therapeutic compounds with bursts of light.

Testing unbuilt chipsA new software-simulation system promises much more accurate evaluation of promising — but potentially fault-ridden — multicore-chip designs.

Transistors promise more powerful logic, more logical powerResearch could affect U.S. manufacturing indirectly, by helping introduce products difficult to build elsewhere, and directly, by reducing production costs.

Liskov named to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Measuring blood flow to monitor sickle cell diseaseNew technology may help doctors predict when patients are at risk for serious complications.

Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science now available in OCW Scholar format6.01SC is the fourth of seven courses OCW will publish this spring specifically to meet the needs of independent learners.

3 Questions with a student leader: Panhel President Denzil SikkaNew head of sorority governing council discusses her ‘home away from home’

Microchips’ optical futureTo keep energy consumption under control, future chips may need to move data using light instead of electricity — and the technical expertise to build them may reside in the United States.

MIT team promotes prostate cancer prognosis toolGroup is a semifinalist in MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition

MITx prototype course opens for enrollmentOnline-learning initiative’s first offering, ‘6.002x: Circuits and Electronics,’ accepting registrants now.

The blind codemakerNew error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission, even over fluctuating wireless links.

For a day, MIT students manufacture Bose speakersIAP workshop teaches acoustics, speaker design to MIT students