Andrew Lippman

Andrew Lippman is a senior research scientist at MIT and associate director of the Media Lab. He has been with the Lab since its inception. Lippman’s work here has ranged from digital video and HDTV to graphical interfaces, networking, and blockchains.

He heads the Lab's Viral Communications research group, which currently is creating interactive systems using analytic and generative AI to realize the long-held Media Lab dream of media that “knows” its content. These keep the human in the loop and work with noisy and erroneous data. There are conversation machines rather than answer machines, most often realtime and alive.

Past work includes MedRec, a blockchain-based, distributed data permission manager with no transactions or economics, and a set of projects designed to build local and culturally-based civic participation such as voting

Lippman has also led research programs on digital pictures, personal computers, entertainment, and graphics, and he has served on advisory boards of technology start-ups and established companies.

He has written both technical and mainstream articles about our digital future, and given over 250 presentations throughout the world on the future of information and its commercial and social impacts. Currently, Lippman frequently speaks about the position of science  in the public mind, and how to build systems that engender trust and scientific thinking.  Lippman received both his BS and MS in electrical engineering from MIT. In 1995, he completed his PhD studies at the École Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.