how to build a structurally sound gingerbread house<\/a>, Schwacke scoured cookbooks for a variable that would produce the most dramatic difference in the cookies.<\/p>\n\u201cI was reading about what determines the texture of cookies, and then tried several recipes in my kitchen until I got two gingerbread recipes that I was happy with,\u201d Schwacke says.<\/p>\n
She focused on\u00a0butter, which contains water that turns to steam at high baking temperatures, creating air pockets in cookies. Schwacke predicted that decreasing the amount of butter would yield denser gingerbread, strong enough to hold together as a house.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis hypothesis is an example of how changing the structure can influence the properties and performance of material,\u201d Schwacke said in the eight-minute video.<\/p>\n
That same curiosity about materials properties and performance drives her research on the high energy cost of computing, especially for artificial intelligence. Schwacke develops new materials and devices for neuromorphic computing, which mimics the brain by processing and storing information in the same place. She studies electrochemical ionic synapses \u2014 tiny devices that can be \u201ctuned\u201d to adjust conductivity, much like neurons strengthening or weakening connections in the brain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at AI in particular \u2014 to\u00a0train these really large models \u2014 that consumes a lot of energy. And if you compare that to the amount of energy that we consume as humans when we\u2019re learning things, the brain consumes a lot less energy,\u201d Schwacke says. \u201cThat\u2019s what led to this idea to find more brain-inspired, energy-efficient ways of doing AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her advisor, Bilge Yildiz, underscores the point: One reason the brain is so efficient is that data doesn\u2019t need to be moved back and forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the brain, the connections between our neurons, called synapses, are where we process information. Signal transmission is there. It is processed, programmed, and also stored in the same place,\u201d says Yildiz, the Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and DMSE. Schwacke\u2019s devices aim to replicate that efficiency.<\/p>\n
Scientific roots<\/strong><\/p>\nThe daughter of a marine biologist mom and an electrical engineer dad, Schwacke was immersed in science from a young age. Science was \u201calways a part of how I understood the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was obsessed with dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up,\u201d she says. But her interests broadened. At her middle school in Charleston, South Carolina, she joined a FIRST Lego League robotics competition, building robots to complete tasks like pushing or pulling objects. \u201cMy parents, my dad especially, got very involved in the school team and helping us design and build our little robot for the competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mother, meanwhile, studied how dolphin populations are affected by pollution for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That had a lasting impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an example of how science can be used to understand the world, and also to figure out how we can improve the world,\u201d Schwacke says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what I\u2019ve always wanted to do with science.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her interest in materials science came later, in\u00a0her\u00a0high school\u00a0magnet program. There, she was introduced to the interdisciplinary subject, a blend of physics, chemistry, and engineering that studies the structure and properties of materials and uses that knowledge to design new ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always liked that it goes from this very basic science, where we\u2019re studying how atoms are ordering, all the way up to these solid materials that we interact with in our everyday lives \u2014 and how that gives them their properties that we can see and play with,\u201d Schwacke says.<\/p>\n
As a senior, she participated in a research program with a thesis project on dye-sensitized solar cells, a low-cost, lightweight solar technology that uses dye molecules to absorb light and generate electricity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat drove me was really understanding, this is how we go from light to energy that we can use \u2014 and also seeing how this could help us with having more renewable energy sources,\u201d Schwacke says.<\/p>\n
After high school, she headed across the country to Caltech. \u201cI wanted to try a totally new place,\u201d she says, where she studied materials science, including nanostructured materials thousands of times thinner than a human hair. She focused on materials properties and microstructure \u2014 the tiny internal structure that governs how materials behave \u2014 which led her to electrochemical systems like batteries and fuel cells.<\/p>\n
AI energy challenge<\/strong><\/p>\nAt MIT, she continued exploring energy technologies. She met Yildiz during a Zoom meeting in her first year of graduate school, in fall 2020, when the campus was still operating under strict Covid-19 protocols.\u00a0Yildiz\u2019s lab studies how charged atoms, or ions, move through materials in technologies like fuel cells, batteries, and electrolyzers.<\/p>\n
The lab\u2019s research into brain-inspired computing fired Schwacke\u2019s imagination, but she was equally drawn to Yildiz\u2019s way of talking about science.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t based on jargon and emphasized a very basic understanding of what was going on \u2014 that ions are going here, and electrons are going here \u2014 to understand fundamentally what\u2019s happening in the system,\u201d Schwacke says.<\/p>\n
That mindset shaped her approach to research. Her early projects focused on the properties these devices need to work well \u2014 fast operation, low energy use, and compatibility with semiconductor technology \u2014 and on using magnesium ions instead of hydrogen, which can escape into the environment and make devices unstable.<\/p>\n
Her current project, the focus of her PhD thesis, centers on understanding how the insertion of magnesium ions into tungsten oxide, a metal oxide whose electrical properties can be precisely tuned, changes its electrical resistance. In these devices, tungsten oxide serves as a channel layer, where resistance controls signal strength, much like synapses regulate signals in the brain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am trying to understand exactly how these devices change the channel conductance,\u201d Schwacke says.<\/p>\n
Schwacke\u2019s research was recognized with a MathWorks Fellowship from the School of Engineering in 2023 and 2024. The fellowship supports graduate students who leverage tools like MATLAB or Simulink in their work; Schwacke applied MATLAB for critical data analysis and visualization.<\/p>\n
Yildiz describes Schwacke\u2019s research as a novel step toward solving one of AI\u2019s biggest challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is electrochemistry for brain-inspired computing,\u201d Yildiz says. \u201cIt\u2019s a new context for electrochemistry, but also with an energy implication, because the energy consumption of computing is unsustainably increasing. We have to find new ways of doing computing with much lower energy, and this is one way that can help us move in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like any pioneering work, it comes with challenges, especially in bridging the concepts between electrochemistry and semiconductor physics.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur group comes from a solid-state chemistry background, and when we started this work looking into magnesium, no one had used magnesium in these kinds of devices before,\u201d Schwacke says. \u201cSo we were looking at the magnesium battery literature for inspiration and different materials and strategies we could use. When I started this, I wasn\u2019t just learning the language and norms for one field \u2014 I was trying to learn it for two fields, and also translate between the two.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also grapples with a challenge familiar to all scientists: how to make sense of messy data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main challenge is being able to take my data and know that I\u2019m interpreting it in a way that\u2019s correct, and that I understand what it actually means,\u201d Schwacke says.<\/p>\n
She overcomes hurdles by collaborating closely with colleagues across fields, including neuroscience and electrical engineering, and sometimes by just making small changes to her experiments and watching what happens next.<\/p>\n
Community matters<\/strong><\/p>\nSchwacke is not just active in the lab. In Kitchen Matters, she and her fellow DMSE grad students set up booths at local events like the Cambridge Science Fair and Steam It Up, an after-school program with hands-on activities for kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did \u2018pHun with Food\u2019 with \u2018fun\u2019 spelled with a pH, so we had cabbage juice as a pH indicator,\u201d Schwacke says. \u201cWe let the kids test the pH of lemon juice and vinegar and dish soap, and they had a lot of fun mixing the different liquids and seeing all the different colors.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has also served as the social chair and treasurer for DMSE\u2019s graduate student group, the Graduate Materials Council. As an undergraduate at Caltech, she led workshops in science and technology for Robogals, a student-run group that encourages young women to pursue careers in science, and assisted students in applying for the school\u2019s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships.<\/p>\n
For Schwacke, these experiences sharpened her ability to explain science to different audiences, a skill she sees as vital whether she\u2019s presenting at a kids\u2019 fair or at a research conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always think, where is my audience starting from, and what do I need to explain before I can get into what I\u2019m doing so that it\u2019ll all make sense to them?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Schwacke sees the ability to communicate as central to building community, which she considers an important part of doing research. \u201cIt helps with spreading ideas. It always helps to get a new perspective on what you\u2019re working on,\u201d she says. \u201cI also think it keeps us sane during our PhD.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yildiz sees Schwacke\u2019s community involvement as an important part of her resume. \u201cShe\u2019s doing all these activities to motivate the broader community to do research, to be interested in science, to pursue science and technology, but that ability will help her also progress in her own research and academic endeavors.\u201d<\/p>\n
After her PhD, Schwacke wants to take that ability to communicate with her to academia, where she\u2019d like to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Yildiz\u00a0has no doubt she\u2019ll thrive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she\u2019s a perfect fit,\u201d Yildiz says. \u201cShe\u2019s brilliant, but brilliance by itself is not enough. She\u2019s persistent, resilient. You really need those on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How can you use science to build a better gingerbread house? That was something Miranda Schwacke spent a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,84320,289,290,84325,84321,18,84322,19,17,84323,84324,84318,51382,84319,82],"class_list":["post-142424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-energy-consumption","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-bilge-yildiz","tag-brain-inspired-computing","tag-eire","tag-electrochemical-devices","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kitchen-matters","tag-miranda-schwacke","tag-mit-dmse","tag-neuromorphic-computing","tag-sustainable-ai","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115428446899391099","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}