Research

The Media Laboratory provides a unique environment for exploring basic research and applications at the intersection of computation and the arts.

Research at the Media Lab comprises interconnected developments in an unusual range of disciplines, such as software agents; machine understanding; how children learn; human and machine vision; audition; speech interfaces; wearable computers; affective computing; advanced interface design; tangible media; object-oriented video; interactive cinema; digital expression—from text, to graphics, to sound; and new approaches to spatial imaging, nanomedia, and nanoscale sensing.

CONSORTIA AND OTHER PROGRAMS Much of the Laboratory's work is organized into consortia (funded by corporate sponsors) and joint programs with other MIT departments. Center for Future Banking Center for Future Civic Media Communications Futures Consumer Electronics Laboratory Digital Life NEXT Next Billion Network SIMPLICITY Things That Think X-Reality Working Group
RESEARCH GROUPS Each Media Laboratory faculty member and senior research scientist leads a research group that includes a number of graduate student researchers and often involves undergraduate researchers.
Dan Ariely	eRationality How we can understand human behavior (rationality, semi-rationality, bounded rationality, and just plain irrationality) in day-to-day behaviors, and in particular in electronic environments.
V. Michael Bove Jr.	Object-Based Media How to create communication systems that gain an understanding of the content they carry and use it to make richer connections among users.
Ed Boyden	Neuroengineering and Neuromedia How to engineer intelligent neurotechnologies to repair pathology, augment cognition, and reveal insights into the human condition.
Cynthia Breazeal	Personal Robots How to build social robots that interact, collaborate, and learn with people as partners.
Chris Csikszentmihályi	Computing Culture How artists can refigure technology to address the full range of human experience.
Glorianna Davenport	Media Fabrics How people and objects can tell tales of their experience and learn from others as they navigate through the vast media fabric made up of intertwining storied threads.
Judith Donath	Sociable Media How to create better online environments and interfaces for human communication.
Hugh Herr	Biomechatronics How technology can be used to enhance human physical capability.
Henry Holtzman	Physical Language Workshop How simplifying the basic tools for digital expression will lead to a new creative digital economy.
Hiroshi Ishii	Tangible Media How to design seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment.
Joseph M. Jacobson	Molecular Machines How to engineer at the limits of complexity with molecular-scale parts.
Dale Joachim	Ecology Media How to integrate digital signal processing technologies and networked communication infrastructures to provide a meaningful understanding of nature.
Kent Larson	Changing Places How new technology and strategies for design can make possible dynamic, evolving places that respond to the complexities of life.
Henry Lieberman	Software Agents How software can act as an assistant to the user rather than a tool, by learning from interaction and by proactively anticipating the user’s needs.
Andy Lippman	Viral Communications How to construct agile, scalable, collaborative systems.
Tod Machover	Opera of the Future How musical composition, performance, and instrumentation can lead to innovative forms of expression, learning, and health.
Pattie Maes	Ambient Intelligence How ubiquitous, personalized interfaces can be responsive to our actions and expand our minds.
Marvin Minsky	Society of Mind How various phenomena of mind emerge from the interactions among many kinds of highly evolved brain mechanisms.
William J. Mitchell	Smart Cities How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants.
Frank Moss	New Media Medicine How radical new collaborations between doctors, patients, and communities will catalyze a revolution in human health.
Joe Paradiso	Responsive Environments How sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction, and perception.
Alex (Sandy) Pentland	Human Dynamics How to make mobile devices socially aware.
Rosalind W. Picard	Affective Computing How computational systems can sense, recognize, and understand human emotions and respond.
Ramesh Raskar	Camera Culture How to create new ways to capture and share our visual information.
Mitchel Resnick	Lifelong Kindergarten How to engage people in creative learning experiences.
Deb Roy	Cognitive Machines How to build machines that learn to use language in human-like ways, and develop tools and models to better understand how children learn to communicate.
Chris Schmandt	Speech + Mobility How speech technologies and portable devices can enhance communication.
Ted Selker	Context-Aware Computing How to design machines that use what we do, where we are, and how we feel to add to our social, educational, and functional success.
Barry Vercoe	Music, Mind and Machine How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.