Mechatronics Research Lab News
CCES Profile: Mohamad Alrished
This story about CCES researcher Mohamad Alrished was originally published on the CCES website September 13, 2024
Mohamad Alrished has been a researcher for the Center for Complex Engineering Systems (CCES) since 2015. Throughout college, Mohamad has focused on obtaining degrees in Mechanical Engineering, citing his parents as his biggest inspiration.
“I knew I enjoyed science and math, but I was initially indecisive when it came to choosing a major. Wanting to keep my options open, I ultimately decided to pursue Mechanical Engineering and enrolled at King Saud University. Looking back, I’m happy with that decision, as it allowed me to connect with professionals from various domains, such as architects, electrical engineers, and others. The field is highly interdisciplinary.”
Robotic System Zeros in on Objects Most Relevant for Helping Humans
A story about MRL research was published by MIT News on April 24, 2025.
"For a robot, the real world is a lot to take in. Making sense of every data point in a scene can take a huge amount of computational effort and time. Using that information to then decide how to best help a human is an even thornier exercise.
Now, MIT roboticists have a way to cut through the data noise, to help robots focus on the features in a scene that are most relevant for assisting humans."
Ramadan Mubarak!
MRL researchers, Lianming Hu, Kamal Youcef-Toumi, Jinger Chong & Malek Ibrahim attended the IBK/CCES Iftar on March 13, 2025.
Congratulations, Xiaotong!
Here’s to Xiaotong’s successful thesis defense! His presentation of “Relevance for Human-Robot Collaboration: Definitions, Systems, Algorithms, and Applications” has earned him his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in November, 2024. Congratulations on the hard work and time he has put into this work, and we all wish him good luck with future ventures!
MRL Says Goodbye to Dr. Fangzhou Xia
Our current research scientist Dr. Fangzhou Xia said goodbye to the Mechatronics Research Lab in August of 2024, at a farewell dinner, celebrating his hard work at MIT for the past nine years. Fangzhou will begin his journey away from MIT as a professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. We wish him the best of luck in his future professional endeavors!
Quatari University Visits MIT
In the summer of 2024, two visitors from the University of Doha visited MIT, including President of the university, Dr. Salem Al-Naemi, and Dr. Rachid Benlamri, the Vice President of Academics. Kamal and his guests spoke to innovation hubs on campus, hoping to facilitate the beginning of a collaboration between the two institutions. Among these offices were MIT's Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), the Kendall Square Initiative, and Office of Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer (OSATT).
Congrats Class of 2024!
We're thrilled to announce the graduation of several members from Professor Kamal Youcef-Toumi's Mechatronics Research Lab! Among them are undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, all of whom have demonstrated exceptional potential in the field of mechanical engineering.
JSW Visits MRL
One of the Mechatronics Research Lab's current sponsors and collaborators, Japan Steel Works (JSW), came to visit MIT in May of 2024, where they toured several labs on campus. Current MIT students Andrew Palleiko and Jiajie Qiu and visiting scholar Jun Suzuki showed off the testbed in the lab!
May 2024 Publication on Invertible Symbolic Regression
This innovative method identifies analytical relationships between the inputs and outputs of a given dataset using invertible maps. By combining the concepts of Invertible Neural Networks (INNs) and Equation Learner (EQL), ISR creates an end-to-end differentiable invertible symbolic architecture, enabling efficient gradient-based learning. One of the key features of ISR is its versatility. It serves as a normalizing flow for density estimation and is effective in solving inverse problems. This work represents a significant step towards developing interpretable, symbolic invertible architectures.
MRL Wins Best Annual Paper Award
Xiaotong Zhang's joint publication with Prof. Kamal "Magnetohydrodynamic Energy Harvester for Low-Power Pipe Instrumentation", was honored with the 2023 Best Paper Award from the esteemed IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics. Their paper pioneered a magnetohydrodynamics energy harvester, using permanent magnets and water as a conductor to power wireless sensor networks. Their innovation has the potential to solve the power delivery bottleneck commonly encountered in wireless sensors and robots.
2020 MathWorks Prize for Outstanding Research.
Congratulations to Chinmay Kulkarny and Tony Tohome for winning the 2020 CCSE MathWorks Prize!