Preventing severe blood loss on the battlefield or in the clinic
In a tiny room in the sub-basement of MIT’s Building 66 sits a customized, super-resolution microscope that makes it possible to see nanoscale features of a red blood cell. Here, Reginald Avery, a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering, can be found conducting research with quiet discipline, occasionally fidgeting with his silver watch. He spends most of his days either at the microscope, taking high-resolution images of blood clots forming over time, or at the computer, reading literature about super-resolution microscopy. Without windows to approximate the time of day, Avery’s watch comes in handy. Not surprisingly for those who know him, it’s set to military time. Avery describes his father as a hard-working inspector general for the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command. Avery and his fraternal twin brother, Jeff, a graduate student in computer science at Purdue University, were born in Germany and lived for a portion of...