Fu is a computer science professor doing research on preventing implanted medical devices from being hacked. At the 2008 Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas, Fu and his team of researchers showed it was possible to get information such as Social Security numbers and medical diagnoses from implanted devices. They also showed that by impersonating the computer a defibrillator communicates with and wirelessly changing the settings, a hacker could send a fatal shock to a patient’s heart.
At the time, MHT talked to Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center researcher William Maisel, a member of the research team, about the project. In the video above, Fu explains his research at another hacker conference, Black Hat 2008.
Other New Englanders selected:
José Gómez-Márquez, director of MIT’s Innovations in International Health
Speaking of swine flu — Peter Doshi, a doctoral student in MIT’s History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society program (winner of the weirdest placement of “ands” in an organization’s name) says we may be overreacting to H1N1:
The sudden emphasis on laboratory testing for H1N1 in the first weeks of the outbreak, particularly in the U.S., produced what I call concern bias, in which concern and anxiety may drive events more than the disease itself.
Microfluidics CEO Mike Ferrara
Meanwhile, New Scientist reports the threat posed by swine flu is deadly serious.
Whichever view pans out, Newton-based medical devices company Microfluidics is betting on demand for an H1N1 vaccine being big. MHT staff writer Julie Donnelly talked to CEO Mike Ferrara last week:
As demand for seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine skyrockets, the Newton-based company is aiming to cash in as one of a relatively few companies experienced in mixing vaccines with adjuvants — substances that may be added to the vaccines to make them work better.
According to the official Twitter feed of PAX, the conference, which ran Sept. 4-6, just confirmed via testing the first case of swine flu. In between sessions with serious titles like “Breaking into the Game Industry the Educated Way” and not-so-serious titles like “How can we make online gaming communities suck less?” apparently at least one conference attendee failed his saving throw versus H1N1 against his constitution (yes, that’s an old-school D&D reference).
PAX East will bring the creators of the Penny Arcade webcomic to the Hynes Convention Center March 26-28 of 2010. Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins — known better to the geek community by the names of their webcomic alter egos Gabe and Tycho — say that the Boston version of PAX will share many of the elements of the Seattle conference but have enough of its own character to draw visitors from the West Coast.
Let’s hope they decide not to share the swine flu, and leave it back in the land of Starbucks and Microsoft.
Intuitive Automata has posted video of its Autom weight-loss coach robot. The company is an MIT Media Lab spinout making robots for the health care industry.
Intuitive Automata CEO Cory Kidd has turned up in MHT before, talking about the then-unnamed Autom and robotics in general. The company has since moved to Hong Kong.
Kidd worked in the Media Lab’s Personal Robotics Group, also home to Nexi, the emotion-mimicking robot. Autom itself has slimmed down a bit since its Media Lab days — it’s also lost the molded plastic hair and added a mouth. After the jump, watch video of Kidd presenting an earlier version of the robot.
The Wall Street Journal talks to Hugh Herr, founder of Cambridge-based iWalk, which makes the PowerFoot One, a robotic, prosthetic ankle and foot device. Herr is also director of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics Group.
In the video above, Herr presents his research at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
Last week, iWalk received $20 million of a $21 million Series B round to fund development of the prosthetic from General Catalyst and New York-based WFD Ventures.
Herr, who MHT first interviewed in 2005, was trapped in a snowstorm while climbing New Hampshire’s Mount Washington in 1982 at age 17. He was rescued, but suffered frostbite, and subsequently had both legs amputated just below the knee. The ordeal led him to take up engineering to develop better prosthetics.
If you’re afraid of contracting H1N1, or you’re a hypochondriac, or you’re just morbidly curious — and you have an iPhone — then get yourself to the App Store ASAP. Children’s Hospital reports it has developed an H1N1-alerting and reporting iPhone app with the MIT Media Lab:
The new application also features an option for users to submit an outbreak report. This will enable individuals in cities and countries around the world to interact with the HealthMap team and participate in the public health surveillance process. Users may take photos – of situations and scenarios of, and/or leading to, disease – with their iPhone and submit them to the HealthMap system for review and eventual posting as an alert on the worldwide map.
The free app, called OutbreaksNearMe, is based on HealthMap, another Children’s project — in conjunction with MIT and Harvard — marking cases of infectious diseases on an interactive map.
New Atlantic Ventures managing partner Todd Hixon calls on East Coast innovators to change the local culture and rise up against Silicon Valley:
… We in Boston should take advantage of being the underdogs: create our own “rebel alliance” to shake off the yoke of California tech giants and VCs. California is a bit complacent in its achievement, and mired in fiscal crisis. Our society has entered into a period of reform. New technology drivers are emerging (biotech, clean tech) in fields where Boston has strong resources.
Scott Kirsner writes about two spinouts from the MIT Media Lab — Waltham-based Affectiva, which makes an emotion-sensing wristband to help study autism, and an unnamed robotics startup founded by Cynthia Breazeal, director of the Media Lab’s Personal Robotics Group, which developed emotion-imitating robot Nexi.
Much more nascent is Cynthia Breazeal’s new company. I’ve been told that it’s going to develop some remotely-operated robotic toys, but Breazeal will only say via e-mail that she’s “doing something innovative in the transmedia space.” It’s not yet incorporated, and she hasn’t yet started pitching investors (though one VC I spoke to last week had already heard about it through the grapevine.) “We’re still working through the concept,” she writes, adding that the company doesn’t yet have a name.
Boston Millennia Partners partner Rob Jevon lists his top ten no-nos for biotech entrepreneurs looking for venture funding:
Mistake #9: Valet Parking
VCs are willing to invest in a proven management team, good IP counsel, and effective regulatory and CMC (certified management consultant) consulting. However, driving to an address in a high rent district may make them feel a little anxious. Seeing a fountain in front of the building will bring on chills. And, if there’s valet parking, they’ll drive back to the office. Venture is about building value. Capital efficiency has never been so important. Low rents, two people to an office, used furniture, obviously recycled artwork, second-hand lab equipment, co-op students, and a grouchy controller are all positive elements to a site visit. How you don’t spend your money can be as important as how you do.
The Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch talks to Flybridge’s Michael Greeley about the growing, stimulus-fueled health care IT sector:
New efforts to overhaul the health care system is creating opportunity for a new generation of health care-IT hybrids. The federal stimulus law, which allocates $19 billion to health care-IT, combined with Congress’s efforts to provide health insurance to the uninsured, is enticing entrepreneurs and investors alike. “I have seen a marked increase in deal flow to capture the $19 billion in stimulus spending,” said Michael Greeley, general partner of Flybridge Capital Partners.
The folks behind the Penny Arcade Expo are 
If you’re afraid of contracting H1N1, or you’re a hypochondriac, or you’re just morbidly curious — and you have an iPhone — then get yourself to the App Store ASAP. Children’s Hospital 
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