Research

Impact Areas

Lead

Una-May O'Reilly

Research Group

Advanced Network Architecture Group

The challenge that motivates the ANA group is to foster a healthy future for the Internet. The interplay of private sector investment, public sector regulation and public interest advocacy, as well as the global diversity in drivers and aspirations, makes for an uncertain future.

David Clark

Karen Sollins

Leads

David Clark

Karen Sollins

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

David Clark

Karen Sollins

David Clark

Karen Sollins

Research Group

Computation Structures Group

Our mission is fostering the creation and development of high-performance, reliable and secure computing systems that are easy to interact with.

+21

Leads

Srini Devadas

Daniel Sanchez

Armando Solar-Lezama

Arvind

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Srini Devadas

Daniel Sanchez

Armando Solar-Lezama

Arvind

Research Group

Cryptography and Information Security Group

We seek to develop techniques for securing tomorrow's global information infrastructure by exploring theoretical foundations, near-term practical applications, and long-range speculative research.

Leads

Shafi Goldwasser

Silvio Micali

Ronald Rivest

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Butler Lampson

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Shafi Goldwasser

Silvio Micali

Ronald Rivest

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Butler Lampson

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

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Jackson

Research Center

Internet Policy Research Initiative

Our mission is to work with policy makers and cybersecurity technologists to increase the trustworthiness and effectiveness of interconnected digital systems.

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Hal Abelson

David Clark

Lalana Kagal

Karen Sollins

Gerald Sussman

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Weitzner

Hal Abelson

David Clark

Lalana Kagal

Karen Sollins

Gerald Sussman

Research Center

Center for Deployable Machine Learning (CDML)

The MIT Center for Deployable Machine Learning (CDML) works towards creating AI systems that are robust, reliable and safe for real-world deployment.

Aleksander Madry

Leads

Aleksander Madry

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Aleksander Madry

Research Group

Lecturers

Lecturers in CSAIL

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Community of Research

Theory of Computation Community of Research

The goal of the Theory of Computation CoR is to study the fundamental strengths and limits of computation as well as how these interact with mathematics, computer science, and other disciplines.

+20

Costis Daskalakis

Leads

Costis Daskalakis

Research Areas

Computational Biology

Impact Areas

Lead

Costis Daskalakis

+20

Costis Daskalakis

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.

+21

Sam Madden

Leads

Sam Madden

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Sam Madden

Sam Madden

Community of Research

Cognitive AI Community of Research

This CoR aims to develop AI technology that synthesizes symbolic reasoning, probabilistic reasoning for dealing with uncertainty in the world, and statistical methods for extracting and exploiting regularities in the world, into an integrated picture of intelligence that is informed by computational insights and by cognitive science.

Howard Shrobe

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Howard Shrobe

Community of Research

Computing & Society Community of Research

This community is interested in understanding and affecting the interaction between computing systems and society through engineering, computer science and public policy research, education, and public engagement.

Daniel Weitzner

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Weitzner

Community of Research

Vertical AI Community of Research

This CoR takes a unified approach to cover the full range of research areas required for success in artificial intelligence, including hardware, foundations, software systems, and applications.

Martin Rinard

Leads

Martin Rinard

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Martin Rinard

Research Group

Data Systems Group

We conduct research on all areas of database systems and information management.

+15

Leads

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Tim Kraska

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Tim Kraska

+15

27 Project Results matching all criteria

Project

Social Network Extraction from GPS Datasets with Coresets

We extract the underlying hidden relations from the given location-based datasets (e.g. GPS data) and we estimate (approximate) the hidden a social network in the data by using a particular data reduction algorithm (i.e., by using coresets).

Daniela Rus

Leads

Daniela Rus

Research Areas

Daniela Rus

Project

Automated Attack Tree Generation for Critical Infrastructure

Using AI methods, we are developing an attack tree generator that automatically enumerates cyberattack vectors for industrial control systems in critical infrastructure (electric grids, water networks and transportation systems). The generator can quickly assess cyber risk for a system at scale.

Howard Shrobe

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Howard Shrobe

Project

Securing IoT

IoT devices primarily use free embedded Linux which has many security flaws. We are conducting penetration tests on IoT and developing a secure version of embedded Linux.

Howard Shrobe

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Internet of Things

Howard Shrobe

Project

Secure Public-Key Distribution

Our work aims to ensure nobody's listening in on your online activities, whether you are doing online banking or texting your friends via WhatsApp.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Security by Design for Cyberphysical Systems

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

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

Denial of Service Mitigation through Protocol Design

We aim to better understand the features of network protocols that facilitate denial of service attacks, in order to design more robust protocols and architectures in the future and evaluate existing designs more accurately.

Karen Sollins

Leads

Karen Sollins

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Karen Sollins

Project

Data Garbling: Computing on Encrypted Data

We are investigating the limits of computing on encrypted data, with a focus on the private outsourcing of computation over sensitive data.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Data Civilizer

Data scientists universally report that they spend at least 80% of their time finding data sets of interest, accessing them, cleaning them and assembling them into a unified whole.

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Leads

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Project

Database Design

The conventional wisdom described in all text books for performing database design is never followed in practice.

Michael Stonebraker

Leads

Michael Stonebraker

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Michael Stonebraker

Project

Keys Under Doormats

Our report argues that giving the government special access to data poses major security risks

Daniel Weitzner

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Daniel Weitzner

Project

Keeping America Safe: Toward More Secure Networks for Critical Sectors

Report warns of hacking risk to electric grid, oil pipelines, and other critical infrastructure

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Splinter: Practical Private Queries on Public Data

Splinter protects users’ queries on public data and scales to realistic applications.

Frank Wang

Leads

Frank Wang

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Frank Wang

Project

Secure Demand Paging for Trusted Execution Environments

This project focuses on altering the way trusted execution environments handle paging to decouple page access patterns from the control flow of the program, preventing an attacker from using these access patterns to learn information about program secrets.

Srini Devadas

Leads

Srini Devadas

Research Areas

Srini Devadas

Project

Sanctum Secure Processor

An open-source, minimal secure processor

Victor Costan

Leads

Research Areas

Victor Costan

Project

Practical Secure Computation

Our goal is to bridge theory and practice to create infrastructure that allow computation and multi-party computation without compromising privacy.

Daniela Rus

Danny Feldman

Leads

Daniela Rus

Danny Feldman

Research Areas

Daniela Rus

Danny Feldman

Project

Reliable and Robust Machine Learning

Algorithms Group

We work towards a principled understanding of the current machine learning toolkit and making this toolkit be robust and reliable.

Aleksander Madry

Leads

Aleksander Madry

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Aleksander Madry

Project

A new way of handling all-to-all broadcast

We design a new all-to-all broadcasts scheme with significantly less communication cost using aggregate signatures.

Alin Tomescu

Jun Wan

Leads

Jun Wan

Research Areas

Alin Tomescu

Jun Wan

Project

Return of the Byzantine Generals

This project studies new solutions to the Byzantine General Problem and its applications in distributed systems and cryptography.

Srini Devadas

Leads

Srini Devadas

Research Areas

Srini Devadas

Project

Scaling strong anonymity

Our goal is to provide provable and practical anonymity to a large number of users online.

Srini Devadas

Albert Kwon

Leads

Srini Devadas

Albert Kwon

Research Areas

Srini Devadas

Albert Kwon

Project

Basing Cryptography on Structured Hardness

We aim to base a variety of cryptographic primitives on complexity theoretic assumptions. We focus on the assumption that there exist highly structured problems --- admitting so called "zero-knowledge" protocols --- that are nevertheless hard to compute

Leads

Research Areas

Project

Vuvuzela: Metadata private messaging

Vuvuzela is the first messaging system that provides differential privacy for users' metadata.

Nickolai Zeldovich

Leads

Nickolai Zeldovich

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Nickolai Zeldovich

Project

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

We are developing a general framework that enforces privacy transparently enabling different kinds of machine learning to be developed that are automatically privacy preserving.

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Leads

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Project

Random Graph with Applications in MPC

To explore how randomness in connectivity can improve the performance of secure multi-party computation (MPC) and the properties of communication graph to support MPC.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Optimization

To enable privacy preservation in decentralized optimization, differential privacy is the most commonly used approach. However, under such scenario, the trade-off between accuracy (even efficiency) and privacy is inevitable. In this project, distributed numerical optimization scheme incorporated with lightweight cryptographic information sharing are explored. The affect on the convergence rate from network topology is considered.

Hanshen Xiao

Leads

Hanshen Xiao

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Kami: A Modular Deductive Hardware Verification Platform

Hanshen Xiao

22 People Results matching all criteria

Anish Athalye

Graduate Student

PhD student in PDOS

E aathalye@mit.edu

RM 32-G978A

PhD student in PDOS

PI
Core/Dual

Adam Chlipala

Associate Professor

Programming languages, formal methods, security & privacy, systems

E adamc@csail.mit.edu

T 324-8439

Lead

Compilation Using Correct-by-Construction Program Synthesis

Programming Languages & Verification

Hemiola: Structural Design and Proof of Cache-Coherence Protocols

Member

Compilation Using Correct-by-Construction Program Synthesis

Programming with spaces

Programming languages, formal methods, security & privacy, systems

PI
Core/Dual

David Clark

Senior Research Scientist

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

E ddc@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6003

Lead

Member

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

PI
Core/Dual

Henry Corrigan-Gibbs

Assistant Professor

E henrycg@csail.mit.edu

T 253-0301

RM 32-G970A

Peter Deutsch

Graduate Student

E pwd@mit.edu

PI
Core/Dual

Srini Devadas

Professor

Architectures, security, computer-aided design

E devadas@csail.mit.edu

T 253-0454

Lead

Using Bitcoin to prevent identify theft

Secure Demand Paging for Trusted Execution Environments

Scaling strong anonymity

Return of the Byzantine Generals

Member

Sanctum Secure Processor

A new way of handling all-to-all broadcast

Architectures, security, computer-aided design

R. David Edelman

Director, Project on Technology, Economy & National Security

Machine learning, cybersecurity, governance

E rde@mit.edu

T 258-6389

Machine learning, cybersecurity, governance

Gregory Falco

Research Affiliate

Dr. Falco is a hacker and expert in IoT and IIoT cybersecurity.

E gfalco@mit.edu

Dr. Falco is a hacker and expert in IoT and IIoT cybersecurity.

PI
Core/Dual

Frans Kaashoek

Professor

Systems, networks, architectures

E kaashoek@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7149

Lead

Noria: a new data-flow system for web applications

Member

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

Systems, networks, architectures

William Moses

Graduate Student

E wmoses@mit.edu

Lead

Tapir

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Graduate Student

Privacy and Big Data

E vaik@mit.edu

Lead

Member

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

Privacy and Big Data

PI
Core/Dual

Una-May O'Reilly

Principal Research Scientist

Applied AI and ML in cybersecurity, healthcare, education

E unamay@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6437

Lead

Applied Machine Learning Community of Research

Adversarial Cyber Security

GIGABEATS: Data science for medical sensor data

MOOC Learner Project: Data science for e-learning

Member

Vertical AI Community of Research

Applied AI and ML in cybersecurity, healthcare, education

Taylor Reynolds

Technology Policy Director

Technology Policy Director - Internet Policy Research Initiative

E treyn@mit.edu

Technology Policy Director - Internet Policy Research Initiative

PI
Core/Dual

Martin Rinard

Professor

Systems, programming languages and verification

E rinard@csail.mit.edu

T 258-6922

Lead

Member

Center for Deployable Machine Learning (CDML)

Systems, programming languages and verification

PI
Core/Dual

Ronald Rivest

Institute Professor

Cryptography, cybersecurity, RSA public-key encryption

E rivest@mit.edu

T 253-5880

Lead

Member

Cryptography, cybersecurity, RSA public-key encryption

PI
Core/Dual

Daniela Rus

Director

CSAIL director, robotics, AI, data science, privacy

E rus@csail.mit.edu

T 258-7567

RM 32/ 32-368/ 374

Lead

Social Network Extraction from GPS Datasets with Coresets

Safety Standards for Autonomous Vehicles

Soft Contact Modeling

Practical Secure Computation

Self-Driving Vehicles

Robust Learning for Autonomous Vehicles

Brain-Controlled Robots

Planning in Congestion for Autonomous Vehicles

Socially-Compliant Behavior for Autonomous Driving

Coresets for Machine Learning Algorithms

M-Blocks Modular Robotics

Robot Compiler

Distributed Robot Garden

Route and Motion Planning for Mobility-on-Demand with Rules of the Road

Member

Social Network Extraction from GPS Datasets with Coresets

Task-Driven Co-Optimization Of Articulated Robots

Wearable Blind Navigation

Drones that Drive

Better Models for Ride-Sharing

SoFi - The Soft Robotic Fish

Controlling drones and other robots with gestures

Using Muscle Signals to Lift Objects with Robots

Embodied Intelligence Community of Research

Helping robots learn using demonstrations

CSAIL director, robotics, AI, data science, privacy

PI
Core/Dual

Howard Shrobe

Principal Research Scientist

Architectures, cybersecurity, web policy

E hes@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7877

Lead

RADMAX

Risk-aware Network Resource Allocation

Automated Attack Tree Generation for Critical Infrastructure

Securing IoT

Artificial Social Intelligence for Successful Teams (ASIST)

Uhura: Personal Assistant that Manages Risk

Member

Architectures, cybersecurity, web policy

PI
Core/Dual

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Associate Professor

Cryptography, encryption

E vinodv@csail.mit.edu

T 324-8444

Lead

Member

Cryptography, encryption

PI
Core/Dual

Daniel Weitzner

Principal Research Scientist

Web policy, cybersecurity, web architecture

E djweitzner@csail.mit.edu

T 253-8036

Lead

Keys Under Doormats

Member

Distributed Co-prime Sampling Algorithms

Web policy, cybersecurity, web architecture

Hanshen Xiao

Graduate Student

E hsxiao@MIT.EDU

Lead

Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Optimization

Mengjia Yan

Assistant Professor

Harware Security, Computer Architecture

E mengjia@csail.mit.edu

Harware Security, Computer Architecture

PI
Core/Dual

Nickolai Zeldovich

Associate Professor

Operating systems, hardware, programming languages

E nickolai@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6005

Lead

Vuvuzela: Metadata private messaging

Member

Operating systems, hardware, programming languages

31 News Results matching all criteria

Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

February 11 '21

Shafi Goldwasser named 2021 Laureate for North America in the 2021 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards

Shafi Goldwasser, RSA Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT. Photo credit and copyright Fondation L’Oréal.

Shafi Goldwasser named 2021 Laureate for North America in the 2021 L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards

AI & ML Security & Cryptography Systems & Networking Health Care

April 09 '20

Automated Covid-19 contact tracing - while preserving privacy

New system uses Bluetooth signals from your smartphone, with the goal of automating Covid-19 contact tracing while preserving privacy

Automated Covid-19 contact tracing - while preserving privacy

Security & Cryptography

March 24 '20

Armando Solar-Lezama wins NSF Expeditions Grant

This week it was announced that MIT professor Armando Solar-Lezama has received a prestigious NSF award for junior faculty, to go towards a new project that could impact scientific discovery in domains as diverse as organic chemistry, RNA splicing and cognitive science.

Armando Solar-Lezama wins NSF Expeditions Grant

Algorithms & Theory Security & Cryptography

January 31 '20

Giving cryptocurrency users more bang for their buck

Routing scheme boosts efficiency in networks that help speed up blockchain transactions.

Giving cryptocurrency users more bang for their buck

Security & Cryptography

January 15 '20

Most websites don't follow European cookie consent laws

Just over one in ten sites conform to EU laws, according to researchers.

Most websites don't follow European cookie consent laws

Security & Cryptography

November 22 '19

Daniel Weitzner named National Academy of Public Administration 2019 Fellow

Algorithms & Theory Security & Cryptography Transportation

July 23 '19

Making it easier to program and protect the web

Professor Adam Chlipala builds tools to help programmers more quickly generate optimized, secure code.

Making it easier to program and protect the web

Algorithms & Theory Security & Cryptography

June 27 '19

Automated cryptocode generator is helping secure the web

System automatically writes optimized algorithms to encrypt data in Google Chrome browsers and web applications.

Automated cryptocode generator is helping secure the web

Algorithms & Theory AI & ML Computational Biology Computer Architecture Graphics & Vision Human-Computer Interaction Programming Languages & Software Engineering Robotics Security & Cryptography Systems & Networking Cybersecurity Education Energy Entertainment Health Care Manufacturing Transportation Wireless

June 27 '19

CSAIL hosts first-ever TEDxMIT

Speakers — all women — discuss everything from gravitational waves to robot nurses

CSAIL hosts first-ever TEDxMIT

Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

February 20 '19

Platform ensures that web services adhere to users' privacy preferences

New MIT/Harvard platform acts as gatekeeper to ensure web services adhere to data restrictions

Platform ensures that web services adhere to users' privacy preferences

AI & ML Security & Cryptography

February 01 '19

How Do You Govern Machines That Can Learn? Policymakers Are Trying to Figure That Out

Nicolas Miailhe, a co-founder of the Future Society, asking a question during a gathering of global policymakers last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

How Do You Govern Machines That Can Learn? Policymakers Are Trying to Figure That Out

AI & ML Security & Cryptography

February 01 '19

AI, the law, and our future

MIT “Policy Congress” examines the complex terrain of artificial intelligence regulation.

AI, the law, and our future

Security & Cryptography

February 01 '19

AI Policy Congress – Part 1 Governance Challenges

On January 15, 2019, the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI) and Quest for Intelligence (QI) hosted the first MIT AI Policy Congress. The conference brought together global policymakers, technical experts, and industry executives to discuss the impact of AI across sectors, with panels on transportation and safety, manufacturing and labor, healthcare, criminal justice and fairness, national security and defense, and international perspectives.

AI Policy Congress – Part 1 Governance Challenges

Thomas Bourgeat, Andrew Wright, Arvind and Sizhou Zhang

Computer Architecture Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity Energy

October 22 '18

Opening up open-source to design better chips

MIT CSAIL system lets users change one part of a processor’s design without impacting the others

Opening up open-source to design better chips

AI & ML Computational Biology Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity Health Care

October 18 '18

Cryptographic protocol enables greater collaboration in drug discovery

Neural network that securely finds potential drugs could encourage large-scale pooling of sensitive data.

Cryptographic protocol enables greater collaboration in drug discovery

Algorithms & Theory Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

August 08 '18

Holding law-enforcement accountable for electronic surveillance

CSAIL system encourages government transparency using cryptography on a public log of wiretap requests.

Holding law-enforcement accountable for electronic surveillance

AI & ML Security & Cryptography

July 26 '18

CSAIL launches new initiative for financial technology

FinTech@CSAIL industry collaboration will work to improve business models, access to data, and security in the finance sector.

CSAIL launches new initiative for financial technology

Computational Biology Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity Health Care

May 10 '18

Protecting confidentiality in genomic studies

Genome-wide association studies, which look for links between particular genetic variants and incidence of disease, are the basis of much modern biomedical research.

Protecting confidentiality in genomic studies

Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

April 24 '18

MIT engineering students team up with Georgetown lawyers-in-training on internet privacy legislation

Every spring, engineering students from MIT and law students from Georgetown University overcome the distance between their institutions and disciplines in a semester-long flurry of virtual classroom meetings and late-night Google hangout sessions, culminating in presentations to policy experts in DC.

MIT engineering students team up with Georgetown lawyers-in-training on internet privacy legislation

Human-Computer Interaction Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

April 13 '18

MIT experts discuss online security and protecting data in a “public-private” Internet age

Last week CSAIL hosted the fourth “Hot Topics in Computing” speaker series, a monthly forum where experts hold discussions with community members on various hot-button tech topics.

MIT experts discuss online security and protecting data in a “public-private” Internet age

Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

February 23 '18

Private browsing gets more private

New system patches security holes left open by web browsers’ private-browsing functions.

Private browsing gets more private

Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

February 13 '18

Energy-efficient encryption for the internet of things

Special-purpose chip reduces power consumption of public-key encryption by 99.75 percent, increases speed 500-fold.

Energy-efficient encryption for the internet of things

Computer Architecture Security & Cryptography Cybersecurity

February 01 '18

MIT security experts discuss “Spectre” and “Meltdown” processor flaws

Last week CSAIL hosted the second “Hot Topics in Computing” speaker series, a monthly forum where computing experts hold discussions with community members on various topics in the computer science field.

MIT security experts discuss “Spectre” and “Meltdown” processor flaws

Algorithms & Theory Security & Cryptography Big Data Cybersecurity Education Entertainment Health Care Internet of Things Manufacturing

January 16 '18

Goldwasser, Micali, and Rivest win BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

This week it was announced that MIT professors and CSAIL principal investigators Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Ronald Rivest, and former MIT professor Adi Shamir won this year’s BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in the Information and Communication Technologies category for their work in cryptography.

Goldwasser, Micali, and Rivest win BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

14 Group Results

Research Group

Advanced Network Architecture Group

David Clark

Karen Sollins

Leads

David Clark

Karen Sollins

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

David Clark

Karen Sollins

David Clark

Karen Sollins

Research Group

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

Our vision is data-driven machine learning systems that advance the quality of healthcare, the understanding of cyber arms races and the delivery of online education.

Una-May O'Reilly

Leads

Una-May O'Reilly

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Una-May O'Reilly

Research Center

Center for Deployable Machine Learning (CDML)

The MIT Center for Deployable Machine Learning (CDML) works towards creating AI systems that are robust, reliable and safe for real-world deployment.

Aleksander Madry

Leads

Aleksander Madry

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Aleksander Madry

Community of Research

Cognitive AI Community of Research

Howard Shrobe

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Howard Shrobe

Research Group

Computation Structures Group

Our mission is fostering the creation and development of high-performance, reliable and secure computing systems that are easy to interact with.

+21

Leads

Srini Devadas

Daniel Sanchez

Armando Solar-Lezama

Arvind

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Srini Devadas

Daniel Sanchez

Armando Solar-Lezama

Arvind

Community of Research

Computing & Society Community of Research

Daniel Weitzner

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Weitzner

Research Group

Cryptography and Information Security Group

We seek to develop techniques for securing tomorrow's global information infrastructure by exploring theoretical foundations, near-term practical applications, and long-range speculative research.

Leads

Shafi Goldwasser

Silvio Micali

Ronald Rivest

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Butler Lampson

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Shafi Goldwasser

Silvio Micali

Ronald Rivest

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Butler Lampson

Research Group

Data Systems Group

We conduct research on all areas of database systems and information management.

+15

Leads

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Tim Kraska

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Tim Kraska

+15

Research Center

Internet Policy Research Initiative

Our mission is to work with policy makers and cybersecurity technologists to increase the trustworthiness and effectiveness of interconnected digital systems.

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Hal Abelson

David Clark

Lalana Kagal

Karen Sollins

Gerald Sussman

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Weitzner

Hal Abelson

David Clark

Lalana Kagal

Karen Sollins

Gerald Sussman

Research Group

Lecturers

Lecturers in CSAIL

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

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

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniel Jackson

Community of Research

Systems Community of Research

+21

Sam Madden

Leads

Sam Madden

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Sam Madden

Sam Madden

Community of Research

Theory of Computation Community of Research

The goal of the Theory of Computation CoR is to study the fundamental strengths and limits of computation as well as how these interact with mathematics, computer science, and other disciplines.

+20

Costis Daskalakis

Leads

Costis Daskalakis

Research Areas

Computational Biology

Impact Areas

Lead

Costis Daskalakis

+20

Costis Daskalakis

Community of Research

Vertical AI Community of Research

This CoR takes a unified approach to cover the full range of research areas required for success in artificial intelligence, including hardware, foundations, software systems, and applications.

Martin Rinard

Leads

Martin Rinard

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Martin Rinard

27 Project Results

Project

A new way of handling all-to-all broadcast

We design a new all-to-all broadcasts scheme with significantly less communication cost using aggregate signatures.

Alin Tomescu

Jun Wan

Leads

Jun Wan

Research Areas

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

Alin Tomescu

Jun Wan

Project

Adversarial Cyber Security

Applied Machine Learning Community of Research

Our goal is to understand the nature of cyber security arms races between malicious and bonafide parties. Our vision is autonomous cyber defenses that anticipate and take measures against counter attacks.

Una-May O'Reilly

Leads

Una-May O'Reilly

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Una-May O'Reilly

Project

Alloy

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

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

Automated Attack Tree Generation for Critical Infrastructure

Howard Shrobe

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Howard Shrobe

Project

Basing Cryptography on Structured Hardness

Leads

Research Areas

Project

Data Civilizer

Data scientists universally report that they spend at least 80% of their time finding data sets of interest, accessing them, cleaning them and assembling them into a unified whole.

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Leads

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Project

Data Garbling: Computing on Encrypted Data

We are investigating the limits of computing on encrypted data, with a focus on the private outsourcing of computation over sensitive data.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Database Design

The conventional wisdom described in all text books for performing database design is never followed in practice.

Michael Stonebraker

Leads

Michael Stonebraker

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Michael Stonebraker

Project

Denial of Service Mitigation through Protocol Design

Karen Sollins

Leads

Karen Sollins

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Karen Sollins

Project

Keeping America Safe: Toward More Secure Networks for Critical Sectors

Report warns of hacking risk to electric grid, oil pipelines, and other critical infrastructure

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Keys Under Doormats

Our report argues that giving the government special access to data poses major security risks

Daniel Weitzner

Leads

Daniel Weitzner

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Daniel Weitzner

Project

Poirot: Secure Protocol Implementation by Design

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

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

Practical Secure Computation

Our goal is to bridge theory and practice to create infrastructure that allow computation and multi-party computation without compromising privacy.

Daniela Rus

Danny Feldman

Leads

Daniela Rus

Danny Feldman

Research Areas

Daniela Rus

Danny Feldman

Project

Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Optimization

Hanshen Xiao

Leads

Hanshen Xiao

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Hanshen Xiao

Project

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

We are developing a general framework that enforces privacy transparently enabling different kinds of machine learning to be developed that are automatically privacy preserving.

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Leads

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lalana Kagal

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Project

Random Graph with Applications in MPC

To explore how randomness in connectivity can improve the performance of secure multi-party computation (MPC) and the properties of communication graph to support MPC.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Reliable and Robust Machine Learning

Algorithms Group

We work towards a principled understanding of the current machine learning toolkit and making this toolkit be robust and reliable.

Aleksander Madry

Leads

Aleksander Madry

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Aleksander Madry

Project

Return of the Byzantine Generals

This project studies new solutions to the Byzantine General Problem and its applications in distributed systems and cryptography.

Srini Devadas

Leads

Srini Devadas

Research Areas

Srini Devadas

Project

Sanctum Secure Processor

An open-source, minimal secure processor

Victor Costan

Leads

Research Areas

Victor Costan

Project

Scaling strong anonymity

Our goal is to provide provable and practical anonymity to a large number of users online.

Srini Devadas

Albert Kwon

Leads

Srini Devadas

Albert Kwon

Research Areas

Srini Devadas

Albert Kwon

Project

Secure Demand Paging for Trusted Execution Environments

Srini Devadas

Leads

Srini Devadas

Research Areas

Srini Devadas

Project

Secure Public-Key Distribution

Our work aims to ensure nobody's listening in on your online activities, whether you are doing online banking or texting your friends via WhatsApp.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Securing IoT

IoT devices primarily use free embedded Linux which has many security flaws. We are conducting penetration tests on IoT and developing a secure version of embedded Linux.

Howard Shrobe

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Internet of Things

Howard Shrobe

Project

Security by Design for Cyberphysical Systems

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

Impact Areas

Kami: A Modular Deductive Hardware Verification Platform

Daniel Jackson

22 People Results

Anish Athalye

Graduate Student

PhD student in PDOS

E aathalye@mit.edu

RM 32-G978A

PhD student in PDOS

PI
Core/Dual

Adam Chlipala

Associate Professor

Programming languages, formal methods, security & privacy, systems

E adamc@csail.mit.edu

T 324-8439

Lead

Compilation Using Correct-by-Construction Program Synthesis

Programming Languages & Verification

Hemiola: Structural Design and Proof of Cache-Coherence Protocols

Member

Compilation Using Correct-by-Construction Program Synthesis

Programming with spaces

Programming languages, formal methods, security & privacy, systems

PI
Core/Dual

David Clark

Senior Research Scientist

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

E ddc@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6003

Lead

Member

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

PI
Core/Dual

Henry Corrigan-Gibbs

Assistant Professor

E henrycg@csail.mit.edu

T 253-0301

RM 32-G970A

Peter Deutsch

Graduate Student

E pwd@mit.edu

PI
Core/Dual

Srini Devadas

Professor

Architectures, security, computer-aided design

E devadas@csail.mit.edu

T 253-0454

Lead

Using Bitcoin to prevent identify theft

Secure Demand Paging for Trusted Execution Environments

Scaling strong anonymity

Return of the Byzantine Generals

Member

Sanctum Secure Processor

A new way of handling all-to-all broadcast

Architectures, security, computer-aided design

R. David Edelman

Director, Project on Technology, Economy & National Security

Machine learning, cybersecurity, governance

E rde@mit.edu

T 258-6389

Machine learning, cybersecurity, governance

Gregory Falco

Research Affiliate

Dr. Falco is a hacker and expert in IoT and IIoT cybersecurity.

E gfalco@mit.edu

Dr. Falco is a hacker and expert in IoT and IIoT cybersecurity.

PI
Core/Dual

Frans Kaashoek

Professor

Systems, networks, architectures

E kaashoek@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7149

Lead

Noria: a new data-flow system for web applications

Member

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

Systems, networks, architectures

William Moses

Graduate Student

E wmoses@mit.edu

Lead

Tapir

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Graduate Student

Privacy and Big Data

E vaik@mit.edu

Lead

Member

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

Privacy and Big Data

PI
Core/Dual

Una-May O'Reilly

Principal Research Scientist

Applied AI and ML in cybersecurity, healthcare, education

E unamay@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6437

Lead

Applied Machine Learning Community of Research

Adversarial Cyber Security

GIGABEATS: Data science for medical sensor data

MOOC Learner Project: Data science for e-learning

Member

Vertical AI Community of Research

Applied AI and ML in cybersecurity, healthcare, education

Taylor Reynolds

Technology Policy Director

Technology Policy Director - Internet Policy Research Initiative

E treyn@mit.edu

Technology Policy Director - Internet Policy Research Initiative

PI
Core/Dual

Martin Rinard

Professor

Systems, programming languages and verification

E rinard@csail.mit.edu

T 258-6922

Lead

Member

Center for Deployable Machine Learning (CDML)

Systems, programming languages and verification

PI
Core/Dual

Ronald Rivest

Institute Professor

Cryptography, cybersecurity, RSA public-key encryption

E rivest@mit.edu

T 253-5880

Lead

Member

Cryptography, cybersecurity, RSA public-key encryption

PI
Core/Dual

Daniela Rus

Director

CSAIL director, robotics, AI, data science, privacy

E rus@csail.mit.edu

T 258-7567

RM 32/ 32-368/ 374

Lead

Social Network Extraction from GPS Datasets with Coresets

Safety Standards for Autonomous Vehicles

Soft Contact Modeling

Practical Secure Computation

Self-Driving Vehicles

Robust Learning for Autonomous Vehicles

Brain-Controlled Robots

Planning in Congestion for Autonomous Vehicles

Socially-Compliant Behavior for Autonomous Driving

Coresets for Machine Learning Algorithms

M-Blocks Modular Robotics

Robot Compiler

Distributed Robot Garden

Route and Motion Planning for Mobility-on-Demand with Rules of the Road

Member

Social Network Extraction from GPS Datasets with Coresets

Task-Driven Co-Optimization Of Articulated Robots

Wearable Blind Navigation

Drones that Drive

Better Models for Ride-Sharing

SoFi - The Soft Robotic Fish

Controlling drones and other robots with gestures

Using Muscle Signals to Lift Objects with Robots

Embodied Intelligence Community of Research

Helping robots learn using demonstrations

CSAIL director, robotics, AI, data science, privacy

PI
Core/Dual

Howard Shrobe

Principal Research Scientist

Architectures, cybersecurity, web policy

E hes@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7877

Lead

RADMAX

Risk-aware Network Resource Allocation

Automated Attack Tree Generation for Critical Infrastructure

Securing IoT

Artificial Social Intelligence for Successful Teams (ASIST)

Uhura: Personal Assistant that Manages Risk

Member

Architectures, cybersecurity, web policy

PI
Core/Dual

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Associate Professor

Cryptography, encryption

E vinodv@csail.mit.edu

T 324-8444

Lead

Member

Cryptography, encryption

PI
Core/Dual

Daniel Weitzner

Principal Research Scientist

Web policy, cybersecurity, web architecture

E djweitzner@csail.mit.edu

T 253-8036

Lead

Keys Under Doormats

Member

Distributed Co-prime Sampling Algorithms

Web policy, cybersecurity, web architecture

Hanshen Xiao

Graduate Student

E hsxiao@MIT.EDU

Lead

Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Optimization

Mengjia Yan

Assistant Professor

Harware Security, Computer Architecture

E mengjia@csail.mit.edu

Harware Security, Computer Architecture

PI
Core/Dual

Nickolai Zeldovich

Associate Professor

Operating systems, hardware, programming languages

E nickolai@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6005

Lead

Vuvuzela: Metadata private messaging

Member