Research — MIT Media Lab

We are an antidisciplinary research lab working to invent the future of

human-machine interaction
health
art
learning
artificial intelligence
architecture
robotics
consumer electronics
kids
networks
music
wearable computing
entertainment
politics
history
cognition
economy
archives
design
bioengineering
storytelling
social science
data
machine learning
technology
developing countries
interfaces
prosthetics
sensors
social media
human-computer interaction
social robotics
computer science
wellbeing
imaging
environment
space
privacy
ethics
civic technology
civic media
urban planning
engineering
transportation
communications
synthetic biology
affective computing
neurobiology
augmented reality
energy
data visualization
virtual reality
computer vision
blockchain
biotechnology
banking and finance
systems
3d printing
agriculture
biomechanics
prosthetic design
wiesner
open source
crowdsourcing
biology
cryptocurrency
genetics
fashion
food
gaming
government
collective intelligence
makers
social change
behavioral science
zero gravity
performance
language learning
public health
manufacturing
ecology
nonverbal behavior
perception
internet of things
construction
industry
security
mapping
extended intelligence
climate change
long-term interaction
ocean
visualization
social networks
physiology
data science
gesture interface
autonomous vehicles
orthotic design
networking
point of care
medicine
racial justice
bionics
holography
civic action
trust
human augmentation
pharmaceuticals
neural interfacing and control
hacking
interactive
community
mechanical engineering
autism research
clinical science
rfid
member event
academia
primary healthcare
clinical trials
trade
open access
cognitive science
alumni
soft-tissue biomechanics
randomized experiment
startup
chemistry
member company
voice
real estate
biomedical imaging
sports and fitness
gis
electrical engineering
mechatronics
publishing
natural language processing
fabrication
event
materials
marginalized communities
exhibit
metamaterials
microbiology
installation

Archived

Black Rock Atlas

Burning Man is a magical place that gets the best of human creativity and collaboration to flourish. To further understand what makes thi...

Archived

Research

City Science

Looking beyond smart cities

Advance human wellbeing by developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion

Project Research

Public Library Innovation Exchange

Public libraries are one of most trusted public institutions in the US and increasingly provide a broad range of education services, rang...

Project Research

City Science Lab Andorra

Andorra and the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab are taking on the challenge of turning Andorra into an “Internationally ...

Project Research

Theme | CityScope

City Science researchers are developing a slew of tangible and digital platforms dedicated to solving spatial design and urban planning c...

Project Research

Aalto Campus-as-a-Service Simulations

How can we get more value from the same buildings? Cities contain many different resources and spaces and typically, these resources...

Project Research

VizNet: Towards A Large-Scale Visualization Learning and Benchmarking Repository

Researchers currently rely on ad hoc datasets to train automated visualization tools and evaluate the effectiveness of visualization desi...

Project Research

VizML: A Machine Learning Approach to Visualization Recommendation

Visualization recommender systems aim to lower the barrier to exploring basic visualizations by automatically generating results for anal...

Research

Civic Media

Creating technology for social change

Research

Open Ocean

Archived

Project Research

Micronauts

Microbes are the foundation upon which life on Earth depends: they set the boundaries of habitability for all plants and animals and crea...

Archived

Project Research

LUI: Large User Interface with Gesture and Voice Feedback

LUI is a scalable, multimodal web-interface that uses a custom framework of nondiscrete, free-handed gestures and voice to control modula...

Archived

Project Research

votoMosaic

A tapestry where each pixel represents a pledge by an individual to vote. Anyone can participate and watch the growing and changing image...

Archived

Project Research

Conversation Trees

An alternative viewing experience for large-scale conversations on Twitter. Each conversation tree visualizes the structure of replies to...

Project Research

RelatiVotey

Many people think their vote doesn't count—that a single vote would not change an election's outcome—and they stay home on Election Day. ...

Research

Poetic Justice

Exploring new forms of social justice through art

Research

Object-Based Media

Changing storytelling, communication, and everyday life through sensing, understanding, and new interface technologies

Archived

Project Research

Radio Days

Following the 2016 election, the entirety of the nation became conscious of its polarization. According to a study by the National Bureau...

Archived

Research

Lifelong Kindergarten

Engaging people in creative learning experiences

Research

Human Dynamics

Exploring how social networks can influence our lives in business, health, governance, and technology adoption and diffusion

Thesis Research

SCRATCH ♥ MEMORIES: Visualizations that empower children to celebrate and reflect on their creative trajectories

Thesis: Shruti Dhariwal. SCRATCH ♥ MEMORIES: Visualizations that empower children to celebrate and reflect on their creative trajectories. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. September 2018.

Project Research

The Atlas of Inequality

Segregation is hurting our societies and especially our cities. But economic inequality isn't just limited to neighborhoods. The restaura...

Project Research

CityScope Volpe

CityScope Volpe is demonstrating most of the urban planning, analysis, and prediction features developed for the CityScope project. The s...

Research

Scalable Cooperation

Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence

Research

Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge

Post Research

Visualizing Scissors Congruence wins a Vizzy

Visualizing Scissors Congruence was selected as one of the Experts' Choice Winners in the 2018 Visualization Challenge (the Vizzies).

Archived

Project Research

Visualizing Scissors Congruence

The remarkable Wallace–Bolyai–Gerwein theorem states that any simple polygon can be cut into finite pieces and rearranged to form any oth...

Archived

Project Research

Scratch BlockArt

Scratch BlockArt is an experimental visualization tool designed to let children discover their own computational patterns on Scratch. Exi...

Project Research

Scratch Memories

Scratch Memories is a web-based visualization tool that empowers children to celebrate and reflect on their creative journey with Scratch...

Archived

Research

Living Mobile

Enhancing mobile life through improved user interactions

Article Research

Diana Orghian – The Optimism Bias

Growing up in a foreign country, the optimism-mystique connection and making data digestible.

Publication Research

CityScope: A Data-Driven Interactive Simulation Tool for Urban Design. Use Case Volpe

Alonso, L., Zhang, Y. R., Grignard, A., Noyman, A., Sakai, Y., ElKatsha, M., ... & Larson, K. (2018, July). Cityscope: a data-driven interactive simulation tool for urban design. Use case volpe. In International Conference on Complex Systems (pp. 253-261). Springer, Cham.