Research — MIT Media Lab

Music, Mind and Machine

How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.

Outstanding Paper in the 2019 Emerald Literati Awards

The MAS.808 course perspective article published in Foresight was chosen as a winner by the editorial team, as it is one of the most exce...

Conformal Piezoelectric Mechanical Energy Harvesters: Mechanically Invisible Human Dynamos

Nearly all classes of wearable and implantable biomedical devices depend on battery power for continuous operation. However, the life spa...

The Future of Neuroimplantable Devices: A materials science and regulatory perspective

The past two decades have seen unprecedented progress in the development of novel materials, form factors, and functionalities in neuroi...

How do materials choices and design decisions affect the regulatory pathway for neuroimplantable devices?

We present a review paper that analyzes how early design decisions can affect the regulatory approval process downstream.

Maiden Flight

Maiden Flight is an autonomous biological laboratory environment designed for studying the impact of space flight on the sole reproductiv...

Effect of a powered ankle on shock absorption and interfacial pressure

Lower-extremity amputees face a series of potentially serious post-operative complications. Among these are increased risk of further amp...

Neural interface technology for advanced prosthetic limbs

Recent advances in artificial limbs have resulted in the provision of powered ankle and knee function for lower extremity amputees and po...

An osseointegrated prosthesis with bi-directional neural communication

Recent advancements in orthopedic implants have made way for a new generation of bionic limbs that attach directly to the skeleton. Lever...

Revolutionizing amputation surgery for the restoration of natural neural sensation and mobility

Lower-extremity amputation surgery has not seen significant change since the Civil War. This research is focused on the development of no...

3D neuromuscular model of the human ankle-foot complex

During the gait cycle, the human ankle complex serves as a primary power generator while simultaneously stabilizing the entire limb. Thes...

NETRA: Smartphone add-on for eye tests

Can a person look at a portable display, click on a few buttons, and recover his or her refractive condition? Our optometry solution comb...

Ultrasound imaging for transtibial prosthetic interface design

In the United States, there are an estimated 1.7 million people living with amputation, with that number expected to double by 2050. Com...

Studying the evolution of gene drive systems

How will gene drive systems evolve once released into the wild? Can they be reliably overwritten and blocked by immunizing reversal drive...

Health sensing using wireless signals

Today’s health sensors (which monitor breathing, heartbeats, steps, etc.) require their users to wear them on their bodies. In contrast, ...

Daisy Drives

Who should decide whether, when, and how to alter the environment? These are hard questions, especially when the decisions will impact pe...

Communications Futures Program

Keeping genetic engineering localized

In a paper published in PNAS, researchers at MIT and Harvard University describe a self-limiting gene drive system.

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Future Storytelling

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Consumer Electronics Laboratory

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From brain prostheses to the 3D brain: Ed Boyden on the future of neuroscience

Boyden is certainly a wellspring of innovative ideas—but more than this, he is a scientific pioneer.

Publication Research

PhysioHMD: a conformable, modular toolkit for collecting physiological data from head-mounted displays

Bernal, Guillermo, et al. "PhysioHMD: a conformable, modular toolkit for collecting physiological data from head-mounted displays." Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers. ACM, 2018.

Physio FreeFall

This project seeks to examine the effects of altered gravity on an individual’s physiology during parabolic flight. Specifically, we will...

Inventing the future of digitally augmented objects and environments.

Near-Infrared Imaging for Detecting Dental Caries

Two-dimensional radiographs are commonly used for evaluating sub-surface hard structures of teeth, but they have low sensitivity for earl...

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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

Living Mobile

Enhancing mobile life through improved user interactions

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How the body could power pacemakers and other implantable devices

Batteries wear out, but breathing, sweat and body heat might provide alternative fuel.

Publication Research

Vomit Comet Physiology: Autonomic Changes in Novice Flyers

Johnson, K.T., Taylor, S., Fedor, S., Jaques, N., Chen, W., Picard, R.W. "Vomit Comet Physiology: Autonomic Changes in Novice Flyers." Proceedings of the International Conference of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2018.

Surgical technique improves sensation, control of prosthetic limb

New study describes first human implementation of novel approach to limb amputation.

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Electronic Publishing

How to distill meaning from complex everyday experiences.

Tiny implant opens way to deliver drugs deep into the brain

Scientists have created a hair-thin implant that can drip medications deep into the brain by remote control and with pinpoint precision.

Launching a lab

How Canan Dagdeviren is going about setting up a new research group at the Media Lab.

Meet the YellowBox

The Conformable Decoders group is now home to a state-of-the-art cleanroom called the "YellowBox."

Materials Research Society (MRS) Bulletin highlighted our recent GI paper from Nature Biomedical Engineering

Piezoelectric sensors have many applications including as vibration sensors, accelerometers, energy harvesters, and even electronic drum pad

Science Translational Medicine journal features our recent paper, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, as an Editors' Choice article

Getting in Touch with Your Inner Stomach: An ingestible and flexible piezoelectric device enables sensing of changes in the GI tract.

Synthetic Apiary

The Synthetic Apiary proposes a new kind of environment, bridging urban and organismic scales by exploring one of the most important orga...

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Forget Me Not: The Botany of Desire & Loss

Nothing triggers memories like smell. Momentary, fleeting, and at times unexpected, one scent can conjure up the warmth of a grandparent...

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Human Perfume

I am currently creating perfumes that capture the smell of individuals who have emotional significance to me. An exploration in the use ...

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Brain-Controlled Interface for the Motile Control of Spermatozoa

The reproductive organs of the female body have long been a site of contention, where opposing ideologies in religion, politics, and cult...

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Synthetic Genome Engineering

We are currently developing novel DNA editing technologies to broaden the scope of genome engineering. Our strategy is based on identifyi...

Scientists Made Music From the Human Microbiome, and It’s Seriously Cool

There are many mysteries of human biology. Among those perhaps least considered, what do our bodies sound like?This was the question on t...

Voters to decide on intro of altered mice to combat Lyme

Residents are invited to weigh in on a plan to release genetically-modified mice on Nantucket to combat tick-borne diseases

Cracking the Genetic Code with Kevin Esvelt

Kevin Esvelt leads the Sculpting Evolution Group at MIT. Their work explores “evolutionary and ecological engineering and responsive science

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.

Tranceflora—Amy's Glowing Silk

We collaborated with NIAS (National Institute of Agricultural Science) to genetically engineer silkworms to develop new kinds of silk for...

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How to give computers human-like intuition so they can better understand us.

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.

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How to engage diverse audiences in creating their own technology by situating computation in new contexts and building tools to democratize engineering.

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How to enhance understanding, enable creativity, and ease our interactions with the technological environment.

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How various phenomena of mind emerge from the interactions among many kinds of highly evolved brain mechanisms.

Grassroots Invention

How to engineer and disseminate powerful, low-cost design and fabrication technologies at a grassroots level.

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