Research

Impact Areas

Lead

David Clark

Karen Sollins

David Clark

Karen Sollins

Community of Research

Applied Machine Learning Community of Research

This CoR brings together researchers at CSAIL working across a broad swath of application domains. Within these lie novel and challenging machine learning problems serving science, social science and computer science.

Una-May O'Reilly

Leads

Una-May O'Reilly

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Una-May O'Reilly

Research Group

Center for Brains, Minds and Machines

Our main goal is developing a computationally based understanding of human intelligence and establishing an engineering practice based on that understanding.

Tomaso Poggio

Leads

Tomaso Poggio

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Tomaso Poggio

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

Clinical Decision-Making Group

We focus on furthering the application of technology and artificial intelligence in medicine and health-care.

+10

Peter Szolovits

Leads

Peter Szolovits

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Manufacturing

Lead

Peter Szolovits

+10

Peter Szolovits

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

Research Group

Computation and Biology

Our lab focuses on designing algorithms to gain biological insights from advances in automated data collection and the subsequent large data sets drawn from them.

Bonnie Berger

Leads

Bonnie Berger

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Bonnie Berger

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

+21

Research Group

Computational Biology Group

We seek to understand the mechanistic basis of human disease, using a combination of computational and experimental techniques.

Manolis Kellis

Leads

Manolis Kellis

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Manolis Kellis

Research Group

Computational Cognitive Science Group

We study the computational basis of human learning and inference.

Joshua Tenenbaum

Leads

Joshua Tenenbaum

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Joshua Tenenbaum

Research Group

Computational Connectomics Group

Our group’s goal is to create, based on such microscopic connectivity and functional data, new mathematical models explaining how neural tissue computes.

Nir Shavit

Leads

Nir Shavit

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Nir Shavit

Research Group

Computational Genomics Group

We develop new machine learning techniques and algorithms to model the transcriptional regulatory networks that control gene expression programs in living cells.

Dave Gifford

Leads

Dave Gifford

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Dave Gifford

Research Group

Computational Perception & Cognition

We combine methods from computer science, neuroscience and cognitive science to explain and model how perception and cognition are realized in human and machine.

Aude Oliva

Leads

Aude Oliva

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Aude Oliva

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

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 Group

Decentralized Information Group

We are investigating decentralized technologies that affect social change.

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Leads

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Lalana Kagal

Tim Berners-Lee

Research Group

Haystack Group

We are an interdisciplinary group of researchers blending approaches from human-computer interaction, social computing, databases, information management, and databases.

Lea Verou

David Karger

Leads

David Karger

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Internet of Things

Lead

David Karger

Lea Verou

David Karger

Research Group

HCI Engineering Group

We work at the intersection of human computer interaction and personal fabrication tools.

Stefanie Mueller

Leads

Stefanie Mueller

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Stefanie Mueller

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.

Stefanie Mueller

Leads

Stefanie Mueller

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Manufacturing

Lead

Stefanie Mueller

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

Lead

Randall Davis

Fredo Durand

Daniel Jackson

David Karger

Rob Miller

Stefanie Mueller

Research Group

Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab)

We develop computing systems for creative expression, cultural analysis, and social change.

Peter Mawhorter

D. Fox Harrell

Leads

D. Fox Harrell

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Manufacturing

Lead

D. Fox Harrell

Peter Mawhorter

D. Fox Harrell

Research Group

Infolab

We investigate language in different contexts: from how it is learned, to how it is grounded in visual perception, all the way to how machines can readily interact with humans.

Boris Katz

Leads

Boris Katz

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Boris Katz

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

114 Project Results

Project

[Inactive] T-1000: A Thousand-Core Coherent Shared Memory System

(This project is no longer active.) The T-1000, a prototype system of a thousand realistic processors embedded throughout an ensemble of interconnected FPGAs, seeks to demonstrate the scalability of timestamp-based cache coherence protocols on distributed shared memory systems.

Quan Nguyen

Leads

Quan Nguyen

Research Areas

Learning and Intelligent Systems

Quan Nguyen

Project

Active Learning of Models for Planning

Machine Learning

We aim to develop a systematic framework for robots to build models of the world and to use these to make effective and safe choices of actions to take in complex scenarios.

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Leads

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

Project

AdaptDB: Adaptive Partitioning for Distributed Joins

Our goal is to develop an adaptive storage manager for analytical database workloads in a distributed setting. It works by partitioning datasets across a cluster and incrementally refining data partitioning as queries are run.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Networks and Mobile Systems

Project

Aggregate Congestion Control

Develop a method for sending persistently backlogged traffic on the Internet while adapting to link conditions dynamically.

Akshay Narayan

Francis Cangialosi

Leads

Akshay Narayan

Francis Cangialosi

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab)

Akshay Narayan

Francis Cangialosi

Project

AIRvatar System: A Framework for Analyzing Virtual Identities

AIRvatar is a system that telemetrically collects and analyzes fine-grained data on users’ virtual identities and the process used to create them.

D. Fox Harrell

Leads

D. Fox Harrell

Research Areas

Impact Areas

D. Fox Harrell

Project

Alloy

Software Design Group

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

Amoeba: A shape changing storage system for big data

Amoeba is a distributed storage system that efficiently supports ad-hoc and exploratory analytics using adaptive data partitioning

Alekh Jindal

Leads

Research Areas

Computer-Aided Programming

Alekh Jindal

Project

An Interlock for Self Driving Cars

Software Design Group

Vertical AI 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

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Armando Solar-Lezama

Project

Approximate String Joins with Abbreviations

We propose efficient and effective algorithms to perform approximate string joins with abbreviations in database systems.

Wenbo Tao

Leads

Wenbo Tao

Research Areas

Spoken Language Systems Group

Wenbo Tao

Project

Arabic Language Processing

The Arabic language is spoken by over one billion people around the world. Arabic presents a variety of challenges for speech and language processing technologies. In our group, we have several research topics examining Arabic, including dialect identification, speech recognition, machine translation, and language processing.

Mitra Mohtarami

Leads

Mitra Mohtarami

Research Areas

Mitra Mohtarami

Project

Artificial Social Intelligence for Successful Teams (ASIST)

Computational Cognitive Science Group

Model-Based Embedded and Robotics Systems Group

Our goal is to develop a socially intelligent team coacher agent that helps humans communicate, strategize, and work together efficiently.

Leads

Howard Shrobe

Brian Williams

Boris Katz

Zhutian Yang

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Weiss Laboratory for Synthetic Biology

Project

Artificial tissue homeostasis

In order to be able to design synthetic organs that function autonomously, we will need to engineer artificial tissue homeostasis. To control the size of these artificial tissues, two major mechanisms will have to be engineered.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Natural Language Processing Group

Project

Aspect-Augmented Adversarial Networks for Domain Adaptation

Vertical AI Community of Research

We propose a novel aspect-augmented adversarial network for cross-aspect and cross-domain adaptation tasks. The effectiveness of our approach suggests the potential application of adversarial networks to a broader range of NLP tasks for improved representation learning, such as machine translation and language generation.

Regina Barzilay

Tommi Jaakkola

Leads

Regina Barzilay

Tommi Jaakkola

Research Areas

Regina Barzilay

Tommi Jaakkola

Project

Aurum: Large Scale Data Discovery

Aurum is a data discovery system that works at large scale, helping people find relevant data.

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Leads

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Spoken Language Systems Group

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Project

Automatic Speech Recognition

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has been a grand challenge machine learning problem for decades. Our ongoing research in this area examines the use of deep learning models for distant and noisy recording conditions, multilingual, and low-resource scenarios.

Sameer Khurana

Jim Glass

Leads

Sameer Khurana

Jim Glass

Research Areas

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

Impact Areas

Sameer Khurana

Jim Glass

Project

Better Models for Ride-Sharing

Traffic is not just a nuisance for drivers: It’s also a public health hazard and bad news for the economy.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Energy

Project

Blood Pressure Imager

Vision Group

Development of affordable wearable continuous blood pressure monitor based on radial arterial pulse imaged from the skin surface of human wrist

Mumin Jin

Aya G. Halawi

Jianhua Li

Leads

Abhijit Biswas

Ted Adelson

Mandayam A. Srinivasan

Mohan Thanikachalam

Research Areas

Mumin Jin

Aya G. Halawi

Jianhua Li

Project

BlueDBM: Distributed Flash Storage for Big Data Analytics

BlueDBM is an architecture of computer clusters consisting of fast distributed flash storage and in-storage accelerators, which often outperforms larger and more expensive clusters in applications such as graph analytics.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

Project

Brain-Controlled Robots

This project aims to let people correct robot mistakes with nothing more than their brain signals - to allow robots to adapt to humans rather than the other way around

Frank H. Guenther

Daniela Rus

Joseph DelPreto

Leads

Daniela Rus

Joseph DelPreto

Research Areas

Frank H. Guenther

Daniela Rus

Joseph DelPreto

Project

Bridging Theory and Practice in Shared-Memory Parallel Algorithm Design

This project aims to design parallel algorithms for shared-memory machines that are efficient both in theory and also in practice.

Julian Shun

Leads

Julian Shun

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Julian Shun

Project

Building a Scalable Database for Autonomous Vehicles

We are building a database for autonomous vehicle sensor data that addresses the challenges presented by the potential scale of autonomous vehicle data and the unique characteristics of the data.

Leads

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Oscar Ricardo Moll Thomae

Research Areas

Decentralized Information Group

Project

The Car Can Explain!

Cognitive AI Community of Research

Computing & Society Community of Research

Developing techniques to allow self-driving cars and other AI-driven systems to explain behaviors and failures.

Gerald Sussman

Lalana Kagal

Leads

Gerald Sussman

Lalana Kagal

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Gerald Sussman

Lalana Kagal

Project

Chameleon: Using Machine Learning to Make Databases Faster!

Our goal is to build a database framework in which the database predicts user queries and builds indexes in advance to allow future queries to run faster.

Leads

Albert Kim

Sam Madden

Aditya Parameswaran

Research Areas

Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab)

Project

Changing Minds via Roleplay in Interactive Digital Media

We aim to study the impact of computer-supported roleplaying in changing social perspectives of digital media users. Such media could take the form of videogames, VR systems, training software, and other types of interactive narrative technology.

Pablo Jose Ortiz-Lampier

D. Fox Harrell

Leads

Pablo Jose Ortiz-Lampier

D. Fox Harrell

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Noria: a new data-flow system for web applications

Pablo Jose Ortiz-Lampier

D. Fox Harrell

75 People Results

Murad Abu-Khalaf

Program Manager, Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center

E murad@mit.edu

T 452-2859

Leandro Agudelo

Research Scientist

Systems Genomics, CompBio, Topological Integrative Biology, Biology

E lagudelo@csail.mit.edu

Systems Genomics, CompBio, Topological Integrative Biology, Biology

Venkat Arun

Graduate Student

Congestion control, applied cryptography

E venkatar@MIT.EDU

Congestion control, applied cryptography

Anish Athalye

Graduate Student

PhD student in PDOS

E aathalye@mit.edu

RM 32-G978A

PhD student in PDOS

Jonathan Behrens

Graduate Student

E behrensj@mit.edu

RM 32-G978B

Member

PI
Core/Dual

Adam Belay

Assistant Professor

Operating systems, networking, systems security, and performance

E abelay@CSAIL.MIT.EDU

T 253-0004

Lead

Member

Covering All K-mers Using Joker Characters

Operating systems, networking, systems security, and performance

PI
Core/Dual

Bonnie Berger

Professor

Computational biology, genomics

E bab@csail.mit.edu

T 253-1827

Lead

Towards Context-Aware Functional Genomics

Metagenomic Binning Through Low-Density Hashing

Computation and Biology

Member

Theory of Computation Community of Research

Applied Machine Learning Community of Research

Computational biology, genomics

Laurent Bindschaedler

Postdoctoral Fellow

Systems for Big Data and ML. ML for Systems.

E bindscha@mit.edu

Member

FSCQ: File-system verification

Systems for Big Data and ML. ML for Systems.

Tej Chajed

Graduate Student

PhD student in systems

E tchajed@csail.mit.edu

RM 32-G978B

Lead

Perennial

Member

Kami: A Modular Deductive Hardware Verification Platform

PhD student in systems

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

High-Assurance Software

High-Assurance Hardware

High-Assurance Cryptography

Member

Compilation Using Correct-by-Construction Program Synthesis

Programming with spaces

FSCQ: File-system verification

Taco: The Tensor Algebra Compiler

Programming languages, formal methods, security & privacy, systems

InHo Cho

Graduate Student

E inhocho@csail.mit.edu

RM 32-G978B

Stephen Chou

Graduate Student

E s3chou@csail.mit.edu

Member

Commit Group

Valentin Churavy

Graduate Student

#JuliaLang, #GPU, #HPC

E vchuravy@MIT.EDU

Member

Julia Lab

Adversarial Cyber Security

#JuliaLang, #GPU, #HPC

PI
Core/Dual

David Clark

Senior Research Scientist

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

E ddc@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6003

Lead

Advanced Network Architecture Group

Internet Policy Research Initiative

Member

Computing & Society Community of Research

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

PI
Core/Dual

Randall Davis

Professor

Human-computer interaction, systems, classic AI

E davis@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5879

Lead

Multimodal Understanding Group

Member

Cognitive AI Community of Research

Computing & Society Community of Research

Human-computer interaction, systems, classic AI

Joseph DelPreto

Graduate Student

Works on human-robot interaction using muscle and brain signals.

E delpreto@csail.mit.edu

RM 32-376A

Lead

Supervising Robots with Muscle and Brain Signals

Brain-Controlled Robots

Distributed Robot Garden

Robot Compiler

SoFi - The Soft Robotic Fish

Soft Robotic Hand

Using Muscle Signals to Lift Objects with Robots

Controlling drones and other robots with gestures

Helping robots learn using demonstrations

Member

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

Works on human-robot interaction using muscle and brain signals.

Mustafa Doga Dogan

Graduate Student

E doga@mit.edu

Member

HCI Engineering Group

Barış Ekim

Graduate Student

E ekim@csail.mit.edu

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.

Sue Felshin

Research Scientist

E sfelshin@csail.mit.edu

T 253-2965

Lead

START System

Member

Infolab

PI
Core/Dual

Manya Ghobadi

Assistant Professor

Networks, Systems, Hardware

E ghobadi@mit.edu

Member

Noria: a new data-flow system for web applications

Networks, Systems, Hardware

Jon Gjengset

Graduate Student

Working on data-flow databases, concurrency, and distributed systems

E jon@thesquareplanet.com

RM 32-G978A

Lead

Member

Spoken Language Systems Group

Working on data-flow databases, concurrency, and distributed systems

PI
Core/Dual

Jim Glass

Senior Research Scientist

speech and language processing

E glass@mit.edu

T 253-1640

Lead

Designing Information-Rich Embedding Spaces

Unsupervised Learning of Interpretable Representations from Sequential Data

Fact-Checking and Reasoning

Speaker Verification and Diarization

Automatic Speech Recognition

Language and Dialect Identification

Member

Using Computers to Eat Healthier

Low-Power Speech Processing Circuits

Crossing the Vision-Language Boundary

Unsupervised Speech Processing

Arabic Language Processing

Health-related Biomarkers from Speech

Community Question Answering

Understanding Language Representations in Deep Learning Models

Embodied Intelligence Community of Research

speech and language processing

PI
Core/Dual

Shafi Goldwasser

Professor

Theory, cryptography, cybersecurity, complexity

E shafi@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5914

Lead

Cryptography and Information Security Group

Complexity Theory Group

Member