Guy Satat
Guy Satat is a PhD student in the Camera Culture group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. He is passionate about developing imaging technologies that solve great challenges in society, science, and health. More specifically, he is developing imaging solutions for seeing through obstructions using time-resolved imaging and compressive imaging.
Guy grew up in Zikhron Ya’akov, Israel. From a very young age he showed interest in robotics, programming, and aviation. Guy went on to obtain a dual bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and physics in 2013 from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology as part of the prestigious Technion Program for Excellence. He then came to MIT to pursue his graduate studies, earning a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab in 2015.
Resulting from his current PhD work, Guy’s most recent invention is All Photons Imaging, a system that captures clear images through dense fog for augmented driving for a wide range of vehicles, such as self-driving cars, drones, airplanes, and helicopters. All Photons Imaging leverages the different light paths created by the fog to reconstruct images as if the fog were not there, using a pulsed laser and an ultrafast Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) camera. Guy also invented FemtoPixel, a system that enables imaging in normally challenging parts of the spectrum, like infrared and terahertz, with remote sensing applications in areas such as gas leak detectors, medical imaging, and artwork analysis.
Guy has numerous other inventions, including a device that measures skin perfusion (speed of blood flow in a tissue), which can be used for diagnosing burn victims or monitoring diabetic ulcers; an imaging technique that may enable non-invasive tumor diagnosis; and a device based on digital stethoscopes that helps parents manage their child’s asthma at home. He currently holds three patents and has published multiple research papers about his work. Guy received the 2018 $15,000 “Drive it!” Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in recognition of his portfolio of inventions.
In addition to his research, Guy is dedicated to mentoring undergraduate and master’s students at MIT. His most rewarding mentorship experiences as a graduate student were three trips to Mumbai, India, funded by his MIT Tata Center fellowship, where he led small groups of undergraduate students on several health-tech related projects. Even after his return, Guy continued to work with the students remotely via weekly video calls. Guy’s primary mission when mentoring these students was for them to acquire excellent research and development skills that would serve them later in their career. He is still in touch with them today, happy to provide advice or a recommendation letter whenever needed. Whether it’s his work as a researcher, inventor or mentor, Guy is always guided by his determination to impact the world.
