Work for a Member company and need a Member Portal account? Register here with your company email address.
Copyright
Maki and Associates
Maki and Associates
Join us in October 2025 to celebrate 40 years of impact from the MIT Media Lab—and transformative human-machine experiences for the next 40! More information about our special events for the MIT Media Lab community of alumni, donors, and members is coming soon.
Forty years ago, the MIT Media Lab was founded on a bold vision: to transcend boundaries between disciplines and reimagine what’s possible when creativity, technology, and human understanding converge. Over four decades, the Lab has evolved into a global hub of transformative discovery, tackling humanity’s greatest challenges and inspiring the future.
This special event celebrates the Lab’s legacy of innovation while exploring its profound areas of impact. Through thought-provoking panels, immersive exhibitions, and artistic performances, we will celebrate the past, advance the present, and create the future.
The Media Lab has always been a place where bold ideas spark transformative breakthroughs, even creating entirely new fields of study. From envisioning digital humanity to the invention of affective computing, which gave machines the ability to interpret and respond to human emotions, to the development of digital health technologies that use wearables and AI to monitor wellbeing and provide personalized interventions, the Lab’s innovations have reshaped how we think, feel, and connect.
Our foundational work in constructionist learning inspired tools like LEGO Mindstorms and Scratch—now with over 135 million registered users worldwide—empowering generations to experiment, create, and explore. In digital design, the Lab redefined the potential of visual communication, from information landscapes to material ecology, paving the way for a more sustainable future.
Across fields like human augmentation, Media Lab researchers expanded human potential with innovations in bionics and wearable computing, seamlessly merging body and machine. In visual computing, technologies like holographic displays and femto-photography have transformed how we see and engage with the world.
The Lab’s groundbreaking work in sensing and listening has brought hidden dimensions of our environment to life, while tangible innovative interfaces like inFORM and TRANSFORM have blurred the lines between the physical senses and digital interaction. Inventing computational social science and transforming musical and artistic experiences through technology, the Lab empowers people and addresses global challenges through co-creation and creativity.
The Media Lab continues to drive transformative change, leveraging interdisciplinary collaboration to address some of today’s most pressing challenges. In women’s health, we're developing a wearable conformable ultrasound breast patch (cUSBr-Patch) for non-invasive early detection of breast cancer, developing nanoelectronic sensing inside cells for human-machine symbiosis – a subcellular Internet of Things (IoT) to transform health-care. We embark on harnessing and directing evolutionary biology to generate useful organisms and novel biomolecular tools to safeguard all living beings.
We recently unveiled revolutionary bionic limbs that move like natural limbs, actuated by conscious thought from its wearer—a breakthrough in human augmentation that seamlessly integrates the physical and digital body, Human v2.0. Our technologies for resilient youth include digital health AI-driven tools to foster emotional expression and social connectedness for at-risk young adults given the urgent need for accessible mental health solutions.
The Lab is advancing climate and sustainability through breakthrough ocean internet of things technology providing underwater battery-free communication systems to protect ocean ecosystems, deploying cyber-physical data and decision theater simulations for urban communities, and using earth observation space satellites to monitor deforestation, mining exploitation, and empowering local communities with a resilient technology-policy framework for positive change.
These innovations exemplify how the Media Lab is not just imagining a better future but actively building it today, ensuring our research addresses global challenges while inventing a better and more just world—by, with, and for all.
As the Media Lab looks to the future, the same spirit of curiosity and ingenuity that shaped our legacy continues to drive our work. Building on transformative achievements in constructionist learning, the Lab is exploring how to create new tools and systems that empower the next generation of learners to solve real-world problems and express themselves creatively.
In the realm of digital design, researchers are pushing the boundaries of computational and material ecology to create more sustainable solutions for urban environments, architecture, and even planetary systems. These innovations open the door to rethinking how we build, live, and interact with our surroundings.
The Lab’s groundbreaking work in creative innovation continues to explore creative frontiers in music, art, and performance, leveraging technology to enhance expression and redefine the boundaries of collaboration. From hyperinstruments that blend human creativity with machine intelligence to immersive multimedia experiences, the Lab envisions a future where technology amplifies artistic storytelling and connects people in deeply meaningful ways.
Advances in human augmentation and personal robotics break down barriers and expand what humans and machines can achieve. From central nervous system controlled prosthetics to cancer detecting wearables to enhancing cognition and creativity to empowering the elderly to sculpting evolution, the Lab envisions a future where the boundaries between human and technology blur in symbiotic ways.
The Lab’s early work in sensing and listening, which gave rise to sensor networks and the Internet of Things (IoT), is pointing toward an Internet of All Things, where objects, systems, and environments—from the deepest depth of the ocean to outer space—are ubiquitous and work seamlessly together. This vision promises profound changes in how we experience and understand the world around us. We harness technology for equity, sustainability, and community empowerment , which highlights our shared values at the Lab ensuring our innovations serve humanity as a whole, addressing both immediate needs and long-term systemic challenges.
The Lab is exploring new ways to help people connect and communicate—whether through holography, immersive technologies, AI + human constructive conversation, or entirely new forms of multisensory interaction. Our innovations promise to showcase a future technology super cycle where genAI spurs on genBio, which leverages the internet of all things in a transformative future for humanity that remains unknown.
This event is a rare opportunity to engage with groundbreaking ideas, innovators, and futurists that are transforming our world and shaping the future. Through thought-provoking panels, immersive exhibitions, and artistic performances, you’ll experience the creative intersection of art, science, engineering, and design like never before.
Celebrate four decades of transformative impact, explore solutions to today’s most pressing challenges, and be part of imagining revolutionary possibilities for the next 40 years.