Research
City Science

Looking beyond smart cities
Research
Biomechatronics

Enhancing human physical capability
Research
Space Enabled

Advancing justice in Earth's complex systems using designs enabled by space
Research
Tangible Media

Seamlessly coupling the worlds of bits and atoms by giving dynamic physical form to digital information and computation
Research
Space Exploration Initiative

Space Exploration Initiative
Research
Viral Communications

People and intelligent machines in a creative, symbiotic loop
Research
Personal Robots

Building intelligent personified technologies that collaborate with people to help them learn, thrive, and flourish.
Research
MIT Center for Constructive Communication

MIT Center for Constructive Communication
Research
Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
Research
Camera Culture

Making the invisible visible–inside our bodies, around us, and beyond–for health, work, and connection
Archived
Research
Scalable Cooperation

Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence
Center for Civic Media
Archived
Archived
Research
Civic Media

Creating technology for social change
Project Research

Algorithmic Decision Making and Governance in the Age of AI

Trying to catch up to a rapidly advancing technology, government agencies, industry, and academia are looking for guidance and best practic…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

LinkedOut: Codesigning societal reentry with returning citizens

LinkedOut aims to define and build solutions to facilitate societal reentry for formerly incarcerated individuals.In collaboration with the…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Gender Shades

The Gender Shades project pilots an intersectional approach to inclusive product testing for AI.Algorithmic Bias PersistsGender Shades is a…
Archived
Article Research

Inaugural Day of AI brings new digital literacy to classrooms worldwide

Thousands of children participate in MIT-developed artificial intelligence curriculum.
Publication Research

Mobility and COVID-19 in Andorra: Country-scale analysis of high-resolution mobility patterns and infection spread

Doorley, R., Berke, A., Noyman, A., Alonso, L., Ribó, J., Arroyo, V., Pons, M. and Larson, K., 2021. Mobility and COVID-19 in Andorra: Country-scale analysis of high-resolution mobility patterns and infection spread. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, 26(1), pp.183-193.
Project Research

RealTalk for Change Boston

A revolutionary new piece of civic infrastructure for more inclusive public input.Real Talk for Change is a collaboration between MIT’s Cen…
Article Research

Some Bostonians feel largely unheard. With MIT’s ‘Real Talk’ portal now public, here’s a chance to really listen

A database of community conversations in various Boston neighborhoods launches publicly on Monday.
Project Research

Mobility and COVID-19 in Andorra

View the main City Science Andorra project profile.Country-scale analysis of high-resolution mobility patterns and infection spreadThe MIT …
Article Research

From modeling quantum devices to political systems

MIT senior Sihao Huang describes his experience working with Alex Siegenfeld towards the emerging field of complex systems science.
Research
RAISE

RAISE
Article Research

Waze for our Pandemic Journey

Ramesh Raskar discuses potential approaches to creating apps that can leverage citizen engagement to improve government responses to crises.
Article Research

Better democracy through technology

Can machines make us better citizens and conversationalists? Deb Roy thinks so.
Article Research

Building a Better Economy

Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland speaks during a TEDxMIT event about how distributed data technologies can help community social structures.
Article Research

At Mass STEM Week kickoff, MIT RAISE announces Day of AI

Artificial intelligence is top-of-mind as Governor Baker, President Reif encourage students to “see yourself in STEM.”
Research
Digital Currency Initiative (DCI)

Digital Currency Initiative
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 Re…
Article Research

MIT’s Deb Roy analyzes divisions caused by social media-dominated world

In a recent lecture, Deb Roy discussed social media, democracy, and the continuing importance of local, in-person conversations.
Archived
Research
Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence

Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence
Project Research

AI and Global Governance

Given the cross-border impact of AI and related technologies, what are appropriate and workable governance mechanisms that can operate at a…
Archived
Article Research

Episode 3: Time for a New Antitrust Era (Mahari, Lera & Pentland)

Thibault Schrepel discusses a new paper on roads to improve antitrust law with co-authors from the Human Dynamics group.
Project Research

Space Freedoms

Sparking conversations through artwork  and envisioning future values for a spacefaring society
Project Research

Space for Virtual Reality

Studying group dynamics in space environments with virtual reality simulations to inform the design of future governance systems
Post Research

The MIT SEI Space Governance Collaborative

The Space Governance Collaborative is an interdisciplinary group of researchers based at the MIT Media Lab with a growing network of g…
Post Research

Leonardo Bonanni testifies before US Senate Committee on Finance in Fighting Forced Labor hearing

Alum Leonardo Bonanni, founder of spinoff Sourcemap, testified before the US Senate Committee on Finance in this virtual hearing.
Article Research

STEM Week event encourages students to see themselves in science and technology careers

MIT hosts kickoff event of Massachusetts STEM Week — a statewide virtual celebration of K-12 education.
Research
Human Dynamics

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

Algorithmic Justice League

www.ajl.orgAn unseen force is rising—helping to determine who is hired, granted a loan, or even how long someone spends in prison. This for…
Archived
Project Research

Honest Crowds

The Honest Crowds project addresses shortcomings of traditional survey techniques in the modern information and big data age. Web survey pl…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Identifying the human impacts of climate change

Climate change is going to alter the environments that we depend on in myriad ways. We're using data to identify and quantify these potenti…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Society-in-the-Loop

Recent rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning have raised many questions about the regulatory and governance m…
Archived
Article Research

Building a more resilient, data-driven economy

“In a resilient economy, power and decision-making should be distributed among a diverse set of stakeholders."
Article Research

MIT professor wants to shift power to the people by building local data collectives

"Building the New Economy" envisions data co-ops to make it easier for people to control and analyze their own financial and health data.
Archived
Project Research

Let's Talk Privacy: Exploring how privacy and data governance policies translate into practice

Let’s Talk Privacy explores how the implementation of privacy and data governance policies might impact a variety of fields.Project Let’s T…
Archived
Post Research

From legislation to implementation: Exploring how to prototype privacy bills through human-centered policymaking + design

The rise of data privacy breaches and a look into policies that address these challenges
Article Research

Informing Covid-19 preparedness in Sierra Leone

MIT Governance Lab and the Institute for Governance Reform work with the government of Sierra Leone to conduct rapid-response surveys.
Post Research

Lesson of a Pandemic for a Connected World

Let’s jumpstart a new infrastructure for industry, health, learning, and the people.
Archived
Project Research

Humanizing AI in Law (HAL)

This work is being continued through The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT.The  Humanizing …
Archived
Article Research

Does the US need a national digital currency?

Proponents say payments with a digital dollar would be faster and easier. Opponents say it would be costly and inefficient.
Article Research

Study uses physics to explain democratic elections

US elections have become more “unstable,” sometimes swinging in the opposite direction from the greater electorate’s preferences.
Project Research

Jibo Social Robotic Research Platform

The Jibo Research Platform is an in-the-field deployable Social Robotics experimentation and data collection infrastructure. Built upon the…
Article Research

MIT Computational Law: "A Perspective on Legal Algorithms"

The first MIT Computational Law report features an essay by Sandy Pentland, head of the Human Dynamics group.
Article Research

Innovator in chief

Moinina David Sengeh, PhD ’16, is trying to bring innovation into “the heart of government.”
Article Research

World's 100 most influential people in digital government 2019

Commending a formidable variety of international change-makers driving digital transformation in government.
Article Research

Beyond the Vast Wasteland: briefing Congresspeople for the Aspen Institute

Ethan Zuckerman speaks at a gathering of Senators and Representatives who came to MIT for an Aspen Institute event in May, 2019.
Article Research

Fortune's 40 Under 40

Joy Buolamwini has been selected as one of Fortune Magazine’s “40 Under 40.”
Project Research

FiftyNifty

This is a grassroots challenge to get friends to participate in democracy by making calls to congresspeople in all 50 states. Live phone ca…
Project Research

The Electome: Measuring responsiveness in the 2016 election

The Electome: Where AI meets political journalismThe Electome project is a machine-driven mapping and analysis of public sphere content and…
Article Research

LinkedOut: Codesigning societal reentry with returning citizens

Rubez Chong writes about the Center for Civic Media’s work with the City of Boston’s Office of Returning Citizens.
Project Research

FindingPlaces

What is FindingPlaces?In reaction to the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of refugees in the city of Hamburg (DE) in 2015, the Lord Mayo…
Publication Research

Effects of environmental stressors on daily governance

Effects of environmental stressors on daily governance, Nick Obradovich, Dustin Tingley, Iyad Rahwan Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Aug 2018, 201803765; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1803765115
Article Research

Unexpected effects of climate change: worse food safety, more car wrecks

On excessively hot days, there are more likely to be fatal car accidents and food safety problems, and police officers and government food …
Article Research

Global Warming? Tell it to the Judge

First, climate change was blamed for coastal flooding and wildfires. The links seemed intuitive and the effects observable. But more r…
Post Research

Exploring the effects of environmental stressors on daily governance

If we are unable to adapt to climate change, it may amplify the marginal gap between citizen need and government assistance.
Publication Research

Validating Bayesian truth serum in large-scale online human experiments

Frank, M. R., Cebrian, M., Pickard, G., & Rahwan, I. (2017). Validating Bayesian truth serum in large-scale online human experiments. PloS one, 12(5), e0177385.
Article Research

What countries' constitutions reveal about how societies evolve

Timing can be everything when it comes to successfully expanding constitutional rights. Now, a study looking at how constitutions around th…
Post Research

The FiftyNifty challenge

FiftyNifty.org takes the hassle out of calling your lawmakers.
Article Research

Electome Q&A: How Twitter explains the 2016 election

Q&A: How Twitter explains the 2016 election