research groups
The Media Lab is a unique environment where an exceptional group of researchers not only think about what the world could be like in 10 or 20 years, but actually build working systems that show it.
More than 30 faculty and senior research staff members lead 27 research groups; a student-to-faculty ratio of 4:1 provides a strong network of support for students. Working with his or her advisor, each entering student decides upon his or her own unique research project.
Current advisors and their research groups are listed below.
How to create communication systems that gain an understanding of the content they carry and use it to make richer connections among users.
How to engineer intelligent neurotechnologies to repair pathology, augment cognition, and reveal insights into the human condition.
How to build social robots that interact, collaborate, and learn with people as partners.
How to engage diverse audiences in creating their own technology by situating computation in new contexts and building tools to democratize engineering.
How artists and engineers can refigure technology for the full range of human experience.
not accepting studentsHow to create better online environments and interfaces for human communication.
How to bring the programmability of the digital world to the physical world.
How to create seamless and pervasive connections between our physical environments and information resources.
How to design seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment.
How to engineer at the limits of complexity with molecular-scale parts.
How new technology and strategies for design can make possible dynamic, evolving places that respond to the complexities of life.
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 needs.
How musical composition, performance, and instrumentation can lead to innovative forms of expression, learning, and health.
How to integrate the world of information and services more naturally into our daily physical lives, enabling insight, inspiration, and interpersonal connections.
- not accepting students
How various phenomena of mind emerge from the interactions among many kinds of highly evolved brain mechanisms.
How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants.
How radical new collaborations between doctors, patients, and communities will catalyze a revolution in human health.
How sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction, and perception.
- How social networks can influence our lives in business, health, and governance, as well as technology adoption and diffusion.
How new technologies can help people better communicate, understand, and respond to affective information.
How to create tools that allow humans to better capture and share the visual experience.
How to build machines that learn to use language in human-like ways, and develop tools and models to better understand how children learn to communicate.
How speech technologies and portable devices can enhance communication.
How to enhance understanding, enable creativity, and ease our interactions with the technological environment.
How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.
