MIT 미디어랩의 데블리나 사카르(Deblina Sarkar) 교수는 혈류를 따라 이동하며 뇌 병변 부위를 찾아 무선 전기 자극으로 치료하는 나노 전자기기 플랫폼 '서큘래트로닉스(circulatrics)'를 개발했으며, 메이요 클리닉과의 동물실험에서 표준 치료에 실패한 종양의 성장을 억제하는 데 성공했습니다. 임상시험은 3년 내 시작될 가능성이 있으며, 수술 없이 접근 가능한 저비용 치료 기술이라는 점에서 큰 의미가 있습니다. 올해 창립 40주년을 맞은 미디어랩은 AI가 의료·교육·예술 등 전 분야를 재편하는 시점에 새 리더십 체제(총괄 디렉터와 교수 디렉터 분리)로 미래를 준비하고 있습니다.
번역된 본문
지난 2월 어느 오후, 데블리나 사카르(Deblina Sarkar)가 이메일을 확인했을 때, 한 아버지로부터 가슴 아픈 편지 한 통이 눈에 들어왔다. 그는 MIT 미디어랩에 있는 사카르의 '나노-사이버네틱 바이오트렉(Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek)' 연구그룹 웹사이트를 찾아내어 10살 난 딸에 대해 이야기했다. 딸은 미만성 내재성 교교종(DIPG)이라는, 표준 치료에 반응하지 않는 공격적인 뇌암을 앓고 있었다. 그 아버지는 혈류를 따라 이동해 뇌의 병든 부위에 도달한 뒤 정밀하게 조준된 전기 자극을 전달하도록 설계된 나노급 전자기기에 관한 사카르의 연구를 알게 되었고, 혹시 희망이 있는지 알고 싶어 했다. 이런 편지는 2주에 한 번꼴로 그녀의 수신함에 도착한다. 사카르는 “이것이 우리 연구의 주된 동기”라고 말한다. 그녀는 AT&T 커리어 개발 부교수이자 MIT 신경생물공학 센터 소속이다.
사카르는 나노전자공학을 고민하며 커리어를 시작했다. 물리학자이자 전기공학자로 훈련받은 그녀는 점점 더 작은 트랜지스터를 만들고 더 낮은 전력 소비를 추구하며 수년을 보냈다. 그러다 지구상에서 가장 에너지 효율이 높은 컴퓨터가 사실 인간의 두개골 안에 있다는 사실을 깨달았다. 뇌는 대략 흐린 전구 하나 정도의 전력으로 작동하는 반면, 사카르에 따르면 현대 컴퓨팅 시스템은 비슷한 작업을 하기 위해 그 백만 배의 에너지를 소비한다. 하지만 뇌 질환에 대한 치료법이 부족하다는 현실이 그녀를 뇌를 이해하고—치유하는—도구를 만드는 일에 관심을 갖게 했다. 그녀는 생체 구조와 융합된 나노급 전자공학이 의학이 결코 이루지 못한 일들을 해낼 수 있을지 고민하기 시작했다.
7년 넘게 개발된 결과물이 바로 그녀가 '서큘래트로닉스(circulatronics)'라고 부르는 플랫폼이다. 신체의 체액 순환계를 항해하고, 병든 조직을 식별하고, 무선으로 치료 자극을 제공할 수 있는 나노급 전자기기다. 수술도, 두개골에 구멍을 내는 것도, 10만 달러짜리 시술도 필요 없다. 메이요 클리닉과의 공동연구에서 그녀는 생쥐 실험을 통해 정밀한 전기 자극이 표준 치료에 실패한 경우에도 종양 성장을 멈출 수 있음을 입증했다. 이 기술은 편지를 보낸 그 소녀에게 제때 도착하지 못할 수도 있다. 하지만 사카르는 이 플랫폼을 테스트하는 임상시험이 3년 안에 시작될 수 있으리라 믿는다. “핵심 메시지는, 우리가 생명을 구하는 기술을 사회경제적 지위와 무관하게 모든 사람이 이용할 수 있게 만들고 싶다는 것”이라고 그녀는 말한다.
사카르의 연구는 미디어랩에—그리고 기술 자체에—중대한 전환점에 놓여 있다. AI는 컴퓨터과학, 정책, 심리학, 의학, 교육, 예술을 동시에 재편하고 있다. 사카르의 연구에서는 몸에 닿고, 다른 이들의 연구에서는 마음에 닿으며, 또 다른 곳에서는 접근성과 권력의 문제를 제기한다. 이제 다섯 번째 10년을 시작하는 미디어랩은 이 주제들이 교차할 공간을 제공하고, 이를 탐구하는 사람들에게 연구가 이끄는 곳이라면 어디든 따라갈 수 있는 허락을 준다.
새로운 리더십의 시대
올해 10월, 미디어랩은 전 세계 연구자, 교수, 학생, 동문 커뮤니티를 한자리에 모아 역사를 기념하고 미래를 전망한다. 이 행사는 미디어랩의 40주년을 마무리하는 자리다. 40주년은 에어로-아스트로 학과 아폴로 프로그램 교수이자 전 NASA 부국장인 다바 뉴먼(Dava Newman, SM '89, PhD '92)이 디렉터 임기를 마무리하던 때에 시작되었다. 2019년 조이 이토(Joi Ito)가 사임한 이후 전 세계 물망 끝에 2021년 지휘봉을 잡은 뉴먼은 미디어랩이 재정비하고 다음 40년을 준비하도록 이끌었다. 그 노력의 일환으로 그녀는 랩의 디렉터직을 두 개의 상호보완적 직위로 나누었다. 기금 모금과 커뮤니케이션을 총괄하는 총괄 디렉터와 연구를 책임지는 교수 디렉터가 그것이다. 두 사람이 협력하여 랩의 비전을 이끌고 연구자들이 그 비전을 실현할 수 있도록 지원하게 된다. 뮤리엘 R. 쿠퍼 음악·미디어 교수이자 '미래의 오페라(Opera of the Future)' 연구그룹 디렉터인 토드 마코버(Tod Machover)가 2025년 7월 교수 디렉터직을 맡았다. 이는 자연스러운 선택이었다. 작곡가이기도 하고 전자 음악 도구를 만들어온 마코버에게는... (이하 원문 누락)
When Deblina Sarkar checked her email one afternoon this past February, she saw a heart-wrenching email from a father. He had found his way to the website of her Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek research group at the MIT Media Lab and written to tell her about his 10-year-old daughter. The girl had diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an aggressive form of brain cancer resistant to standard treatments. He had come across Sarkar’s research on nanoscale electronic devices designed to move through the bloodstream, reach diseased regions of the brain, and deliver precisely targeted electrical stimulation, and he wanted to know if there was any hope. Messages like this one land in her inbox every other week or so. It’s “the main motivation behind our work,” says Sarkar, the AT&T Career Development Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and a member of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering. Sarkar started her career thinking about nanoelectronics. A physicist and electrical engineer by training, she spent years making ever-smaller transistors, chasing increasingly low power consumption, until she recognized that the most energy-efficient computer on Earth was actually in the human skull. The brain runs on roughly as much power as a dim lightbulb, and Sarkar says modern computing systems consume about a million times that amount to do comparable work. But the lack of treatments for brain diseases got her interested in building tools to understand—and heal—the brain. She began to think about how nanoscale electronics, fused into biological structures, might do things medicine had never managed. The result, developed over more than seven years, is a platform she calls circulatronics: nanoscale electronic devices capable of navigating the body’s fluid systems, identifying diseased tissue, and providing wireless therapeutic stimulation—no surgery, holes in the skull, or $100,000 procedure required. In collaboration with the Mayo Clinic, she’s shown in mice that precise electrical stimulation can halt tumor growth in cases where standard treatments have failed. The technology may not arrive in time for the girl whose father wrote to her. But Sarkar believes clinical trials to test the platform could begin within three years. “The main message,” she says, “is that we want to make life-saving technologies accessible to all, irrespective of their socioeconomic status.” Sarkar’s work comes at a pivotal moment for the Media Lab—and for technology itself. AI is reshaping computer science, policy, psychology, medicine, education, and art all at once. It touches the body in Sarkar’s work, the mind in others’, and it raises questions of access and power elsewhere. The Media Lab, now starting its fifth decade, gives those topics room to intersect and the people pursuing them permission to follow the work wherever it leads. A new era of leadership This October, the Media Lab will bring together its global community of researchers, faculty, students, and alumni to celebrate its history and look to the future. The event caps off the lab’s 40th year, which began just as Dava Newman, SM ’89, PhD ’92, the Apollo Program Professor of Aero-Astro and former deputy administrator at NASA, was wrapping up her tenure as director. Upon taking the helm in 2021—after a worldwide search for a successor to Joi Ito, who stepped down in 2019—Newman helped the MediaLab regroupand prepare for its next four decades. As part of that effort, she split the lab’s directorship into two complementary positions: an executive director to oversee fundraising and communications, and a faculty director responsible for research. Working together, the two would shepherd the lab’s vision and give its researchers the support to realize it. Tod Machover, the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media and director of the Opera of the Future research group, stepped into the role of faculty director in July 2025. It was a logical fit: Machover, a composer who also builds electronic instruments (including a hypercello for Yo-Yo Ma), has been on the Media Lab faculty since the mid-1980s. “If technology is changing, we should wrestle with it and figure out what good we can do for humanity.” Jessica Rosenworcel Then, in September, Jessica Rosenworcel became the lab’s executive director after stepping down as chair of the Federal Communications Commission. At the FCC, she was accustomed to seeing technology deployed in ways that were already shaping public life for better and worse. For example, the ability to move data across networks underpins much of the modern economy, but she also saw that technology being used to generate robocalls, in one case even turning a clone of President Biden’s voice into a tool for election interference. At the Media Lab, she’d get a chance to help steer new technologies in positive directions. “This is a place invested in the idea that if technology is changing, we should wrestle with it and figure out what good we can do for humanity,” she says. As Rosenworcel settled in, she and Machover found that their different strengths complemented each other. “I’ve really not seen anybody who can get to the core of a problem and synthesize complex situations as Jessica can,” Machover says. Meanwhile, she sees in Machover the intelligence of an artist who won’t let something go until it is exactly as it should be. “The perfection of small things can make such a difference in a piece of art,” she says. “There’s incredible focus there.” Two months after Rosenworcel arrived, the Media Lab/Media Arts and Sciences Visiting Committee, an outside group of academics and businesspeople including alumni and members of the MIT Corporation, came to evaluate the lab. “It forced me to learn this place really fast,” Rosenworcel says, “and get us to really think about the story we want to tell going forward.” For her, the pace of the transition fit the pace of the moment. “This place [has] thought largely about technology and deploying it at scale,” she says. “But now we also have to think about velocity, because change is coming faster.” Being digital and being human The Media Lab opened in 1985, the year after Apple launched the Macintosh and just as MIDI, the evolving standard that allows digital instruments and computers to communicate, was becoming part of the infrastructure of electronic music. The lab’s founders—Nicholas Negroponte ’66, MArch ’66, a young professor of computer graphics with a contrarian streak, and Jerome Wiesner, a former MIT president—believed that computers would become creative and communicative tools, changing how people made art, shared information, learned, and understood the world. “What’s the future of being a human being? That’s the question everybody here is asking.” Tod Machover That founding thesis proved durable. Again and again, the Media Lab moved early into emerging technologies—when there was still room to shape what they could become, who could use them, and whose interests they would serve. In the 1960s, Seymour Papert, one of the lab’s founding intellectual spirits, helped develop Logo, an educational programming language that let children learn mathematics by writing commands for a small on-screen turtle or a turtle-like robot. His student Mitch Resnick, SM ’88, PhD ’92, carried that mission into Scratch, now the most widely used tool in the world for teaching children to code. In 1998, Neil Gershenfeld launched “How to Make Almost Anything,” a course that catalyzed the global fab lab movement, spreading digital fabrication tools from Somerville to the Norwegian Arctic. The technology behind the Kindle’s E Ink display was spun out of the lab in 1997. In each case, the animating idea was consistent: Powerful tools should reach everyone. Today, the lab is facing a new set of urgent, constantly evolving questions. As AI reshapes the world, it’s asking what role it should play in keeping the future open, creative, and humane. “Nothing compares to what’s