PI
Core/Dual

Daniel Jackson

Professor

Email

dnj@csail.mit.edu

Phone

258-8471

Room

Daniel Jackson is professor of computer science at MIT, and associate director of CSAIL. For his research in software, he won the ACM SIGSOFT Impact Award, the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award and was made an ACM Fellow.

He is the lead designer of the Alloy modeling language, and author of Software Abstractions. He chaired a National Academies study on software dependability, and has collaborated on software projects with NASA on air-traffic control, with Massachusetts General Hospital on proton therapy, and with Toyota on autonomous cars.

His most recent book, Essence of Software, offers a fresh approach to software design, and shows how thinking about software in terms of concepts and their relationships can lead to more usable and effective software.

Related Links

Last updated Mar 28 '22

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Impact Areas

Internet of Things

Projects

Project

Riffle

Software Design Group

A local-first reactive relational database that aims to make it easier for anyone to build apps.

Leads

Geoffrey Litt

Nicholas Schiefer

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Systems & Networking

Project

Wildcard

Software Design Group

Human-Computer Interaction

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Wildcard is a platform that empowers anyone to build browser extensions and modify websites to meet their own specific needs, using a familiar spreadsheet view.

Geoffrey Litt

Leads

Geoffrey Litt

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Geoffrey Litt

Project

Alloy

Software Design Group

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Alloy is a language for describing structures and a tool for exploring them. It has been used in a wide range of applications from finding holes in security mechanisms to designing telephone switching networks. Hundreds of projects have used Alloy for design analysis, for verification, for simulation, and as a backend for many other kinds of analysis and synthesis tools, and Alloy is currently being taught in courses worldwide.

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Security & Cryptography

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

An Interlock for Self Driving Cars

Software Design Group

Computer-Aided Programming

Vertical AI Community of Research

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Self-driving cars are likely to be safer, on average, than human-driven cars. But they may fail in new and catastrophic ways that a human driver could prevent. This project is designing a new architecture for a highly dependable self-driving car.

Daniel Jackson

Armando Solar-Lezama

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Armando Solar-Lezama

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Systems & Networking

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Armando Solar-Lezama

Project

Poirot: Secure Protocol Implementation by Design

Software Design Group

Even formally verified protocols that have been faithfully implemented have been found to have security vulnerabilities. A new framework eliminates such vulnerabilities by design.

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Security & Cryptography

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

Rethinking Software Design

Software Design Group

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

What is design thinking in the context of software? We're developing a new approach to software design that achieves usability and robustness by going deeper than the user interface.

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Daniel Jackson

Project

Gitless: a simple version control system built on top of Git

Software Design Group

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Gitless is a conceptual redesign of Git which attempts to make Git easier to learn and use

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Daniel Jackson

Project

Déjà Vu: Constructing Apps from Concepts

Software Design Group

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Déjà Vu is a new platform for end-user development of apps with rich functionality. It features a novel theory of modularity for binding concepts; an extensive library of reusable concepts; and a WYSIWYG tool for specifying bindings and customizing visual layout

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Daniel Jackson

Project

Security by Design for Cyberphysical Systems

Software Design Group

An approach to reducing risks of attack on cyberphysical infrastructure (such as water purification plants and electric grids) with new software design and analysis techniques.

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Security & Cryptography

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

Espalier

Software Design Group

Espalier (formerly Object Spreadsheets) is a new computational paradigm that combines the usability advantages of spreadsheets with SQL-like expressive power, providing a way to build a wide class of interactive applications more easily than with existing tools.

Leads

Research Areas

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

7 More

Groups

Community of Research

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

The focus of the HCI CoR is inventing new systems and technology that lie at the interface between people and computation, and understanding their design, implementation, and societal impact.

+4

Stefanie Mueller

Leads

Stefanie Mueller

Research Areas

Graphics & Vision

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Impact Areas

Lead

Stefanie Mueller

Stefanie Mueller

Community of Research

Systems Community of Research

The Systems CoR is focused on building and investigating large-scale software systems that power modern computers, phones, data centers, and networks, including operating systems, the Internet, wireless networks, databases, and other software infrastructure.

+24

Sam Madden

Leads

Sam Madden

Research Areas

Computer Architecture

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Security & Cryptography

Systems & Networking

Impact Areas

Internet of Things

Lead

Sam Madden

Sam Madden

Research Group

Human-Computer Interaction

HCI faculty and researchers in CSAIL.

Leads

Randall Davis

Fredo Durand

Daniel Jackson

David Karger

Rob Miller

Stefanie Mueller

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Lead

Randall Davis

Fredo Durand

Daniel Jackson

David Karger

Rob Miller

Stefanie Mueller

Research Group

Software Design Group

Our goal is to find better ways to make software, and ways to make software better.

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Human-Computer Interaction

Programming Languages & Software Engineering

Security & Cryptography

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Jackson

Daniel Jackson

1 More