The Mobile Technology group was established in 2012 by Dr. Rich Fletcher after earning degrees in Physics, EECS, and Information Technology from MIT, serving in the US Military (Captain, US Air Force), and founding several start-up companies. Dr. Fletcher created the Mobile Technology Group as a means of creating social impact using the most advanced technologies.  Our group was initially based at the MIT D-Lab, and later moved to MIT Mechanical Engineering, as part of the Auto-ID Lab. The majority of students in the Mobile Technology group are students in the MIT EECS department, where Dr. Fletcher is an authorized thesis supervisor and academic advisor.

While our group’s research is founded on technology, Dr. Fletcher’s prior work with clinical applications of wearable sensors and mobile apps led to Dr. Fletcher’s academic appointment as Assistant Professor at UMass Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry (2011), Research Scientist at Mass General Hospital Department of Global Health Pediatrics (2010), and in 2022, Dr. Fletcher became adjunct faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, specializing in addiction.  To help educate the MIT student community about the real-world practice of mental health, Dr. Fletcher founded the MIT course “Technologies for Mental Health and Wellness” in 2018, which attracts many students from Harvard as well as MIT.

Our group aspires to address the biggest public health challenges and needs, such as drug addiction, the aging population, childhood mental health, and the needs of poor communities in global health worldwide.  Our technologies span the areas of electronics / sensor design, signal processing algorithms, machine learning, user interface design, mobile app development, and server development for IoT.

While some of the projects we do may not be “cool” or “sexy,” and sometimes it is very difficult to raise funding for our work, our group is fueled and inspired by the talented students in our group and the strong desire of MIT students to work on projects that have social impact.  Publishing our work is not the end but just the beginning of the technology transition process.  We partner and license our technology to clinical organizations, companies, and NGOs around the world to validate and sustainably deploy these technologies.