Research

Impact Areas

Lead

Una-May O'Reilly

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 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

Computer Architecture

Impact Areas

Lead

Srini Devadas

Daniel Sanchez

Armando Solar-Lezama

Arvind

+21

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

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 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

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

We aim to develop the science of autonomy toward a future with robots and AI systems integrated into everyday life, supporting people with cognitive and physical tasks.

+13

Daniela Rus

Leads

Daniela Rus

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Daniela Rus

+13

Daniela Rus

Research Group

Genesis Group

The Genesis Group focuses on developing an account of human intelligence with special
emphasis on developing computational models of how people tell, perceive and understand
stories.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

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

Entertainment

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

Research Group

Machine Learning

We work on a variety of topics spanning theoretical foundations, algorithms, and applications.

Leads

Tamara Broderick

Tommi Jaakkola

Stefanie Jegelka

Leslie Kaelbling

David Sontag

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Tamara Broderick

Tommi Jaakkola

Stefanie Jegelka

Leslie Kaelbling

David Sontag

Research Group

Sensing, Learning and Inference

We develop scalable algorithms for analysis of complex, high-dimensional data.

John Fisher

Leads

John Fisher

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Internet of Things

Lead

John Fisher

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 Group

Spoken Language Systems Group

Our goal is to create technology that makes it possible for everyone in the world to interact with with computers via natural spoken language.

Jim Glass

Leads

Jim Glass

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Jim Glass

Research Group

Sussman Lab

We focus on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing educational methods.

Gerald Sussman

Leads

Gerald Sussman

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Manufacturing

Lead

Gerald Sussman

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

Computer Architecture

Learning and Intelligent Systems

Impact Areas

Lead

Sam Madden

+21

Sam Madden

32 Project Results

Project

Active Learning of Models for Planning

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

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

Entertainment

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

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

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Una-May O'Reilly

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

Model-Based Embedded and Robotics Systems Group

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

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

Spoken Language Systems Group

Howard Shrobe

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

Impact Areas

Sameer Khurana

Jim Glass

Project

Bayesian Optimization for Global Optimization of Expensive Black-box Functions

Learning and Intelligent Systems

We study the fundamentals of Bayesian optimization and develop efficient Bayesian optimization methods for global optimization of expensive black-box functions originated from a range of different applications.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

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

Transportation

Project

The Car Can Explain!

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

Transportation

Gerald Sussman

Lalana Kagal

Project

CliNER: Clinical Concept Extraction

Applied Machine Learning Community of Research

Clinical concept extraction (CCE) of named entities - such as problems, tests, and treatments - aids in forming an understanding of notes and provides a foundation for many downstream clinical decision-making tasks. Historically, this task has been posed as a standard named entity recognition (NER) sequence tagging problem, and solved with feature-based methods using hand-engineered domain knowledge. Recent advances, however, have demonstrated the efficacy of LSTM-based models for NER tasks, including CCE. This work presents CliNER 2.0, a simple-to-install, open-source tool for extracting concepts from clinical text. CliNER 2.0 uses a word- and character- level LSTM model, and achieves state-of-the-art performance. For ease of use, the tool also includes pre-trained models available for public use.

Leads

William Boag

Elena Sergeeva

Peter Szolovits

Anna Rumshisky

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Data Civilizer

Data Systems Group

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

Cryptography and Information Security Group

Michael Stonebraker

Sam Madden

Project

Data Garbling: Computing on Encrypted Data

Theory of Computation Community of Research

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

Advanced Network Architecture Group

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

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

Karen Sollins

Project

Drones that Drive

Multi-robot path planning for robot swarms that can both fly and drive

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Vertical AI Community of Research

Transportation

Project

EQ-Radio: Emotion Recognition using Wireless Signals

Networks at MIT

EQ-Radio can infer a person’s emotions using wireless signals. It transmits an RF signal and analyzes its reflections off a person’s body to recognize his emotional state (happy, sad, etc.).

Dina Katabi

Leads

Dina Katabi

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Entertainment

Internet of Things

Dina Katabi

Project

Geometry in Large-Scale Machine Learning

Data often has geometric structure which can enable better inference; this project aims to scale up geometry-aware techniques for use in machine learning settings with lots of data, so that this structure may be utilized in practice.

Justin Solomon

Stefanie Jegelka

Leads

Justin Solomon

Stefanie Jegelka

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Internet of Things

Justin Solomon

Stefanie Jegelka

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

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

Daniel Weitzner

Project

MOOC Learner Project: Data science for e-learning

Applied Machine Learning Community of Research

The MOOC Learner Project provides learning scientists, instructional designers and online education specialists with open source software that enables them to efficiently extract teaching and learning insights from the data collected when students learn on the edX or open edX platform.

Una-May O'Reilly

Erik Hemberg

Leads

Una-May O'Reilly

Erik Hemberg

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Una-May O'Reilly

Erik Hemberg

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

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

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

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

Robust Optimization in Machine Learning and Data Mining

Many optimization problems in machine learning rely on noisy, estimated parameters. Neglecting this uncertainty can lead to great fluctuations in performance. We are developing algorithms for these already nonconvex problems that are robust to such errors.

Stefanie Jegelka

Leads

Stefanie Jegelka

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Kami: A Modular Deductive Hardware Verification Platform

Stefanie Jegelka

41 People Results

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

Computation Structures Group

FSCQ: File-system verification

Advanced Network Architecture Group

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

Computation Structures Group

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

Mustafa Doga Dogan

Graduate Student

E doga@mit.edu

Member

HCI Engineering Group

PI
Core/Dual

Fredo Durand

Professor

Vision, graphics, computational photography

E fredo@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7223

Lead

Computer Graphics Group

Computational Understanding of Visualizations and Graphic Designs

Vision Group

Member

Computational Bounce Flash for Indoor Portraits

Halide

Visual Computing Community of Research

Vision, graphics, computational photography

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.

Sue Felshin

Research Scientist

E sfelshin@csail.mit.edu

T 253-2965

Lead

START System

Member

Infolab

PI
Core/Dual

John Fisher

Senior Research Scientist

Vision, machine learning, signal processing

E fisher@csail.mit.edu

T 253-0788

Lead

Vision Group

Sensing, Learning and Inference

Member

Visual Computing Community of Research

Vision, machine learning, signal processing

PI
Core/Dual

Jim Glass

Senior Research Scientist

speech and language processing

E glass@mit.edu

T 253-1640

Lead

Spoken Language Systems Group

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

Lelia Hampton

Graduate Student

Ph.D. Student

E lelia@mit.edu

Ph.D. Student

Ramin Hasani

Postdoctoral Associate

Machine learning Scientist

E rhasani@csail.mit.edu

Machine learning Scientist

PI
Core/Dual

Frans Kaashoek

Professor

Systems, networks, architectures

E kaashoek@csail.mit.edu

T 253-7149

Lead

Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems

Scaling Filesystems To Many Cores

Perennial

Member

Noria: a new data-flow system for web applications

Computation Structures Group

FSCQ: File-system verification

Systems, networks, architectures

PI
Core/Dual

Lalana Kagal

Principal Research Scientist

Privacy, web decentralization, distributed data

E lkagal@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5845

Lead

The Car Can Explain!

Solid: Social Linked Data

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

Member

Privacy, web decentralization, distributed data

PI
Core/Dual

David Karger

Professor

Helping people manage information

E karger@csail.mit.edu

T 258-6167

Lead

Haystack Group

Mavo: Creating Interactive Data-Driven Web Applications by Authoring HTML

Algorithms Group

Wikum: Bridging Discussion Systems and Wikis with Collective Summarization

Squadbox: Combating Online Harassment using Friendsourced Moderation

Eyebrowse: Social and Public Web Browsing

Talkademic: Motivating Online Academic Discourse

Member

Human-Computer Interaction Community of Research

Theory of Computation Community of Research

EQ-Radio: Emotion Recognition using Wireless Signals

Helping people manage information

PI
Core/Dual

Dina Katabi

Professor

Wireless, networks, machine learning

E dina@csail.mit.edu

T 324-6027

Lead

Networks at MIT

Member

Vertical AI Community of Research

Wireless, networks, machine learning

PI
Core/Dual

Boris Katz

Principal Research Scientist

Natural language processing

E boris@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6032

Lead

Infolab

START System

Semantic Parsing using Vision

Generating Plans for Agents using Video and Language

Inferring “Theory of Mind” with vision and language

Artificial Social Intelligence for Successful Teams (ASIST)

Member

Center for Brains, Minds and Machines

Clinical Decision-Making Group

Natural language processing

Fern Keniston

Senior Administrative Assistant

Research and Education Support

E fern@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5860

RM 32/ 32-250A/ 391

Member

Research and Education Support

Sameer Khurana

Graduate Student

unsupervised speech processing, automatic speech recognition

E skhurana@mit.edu

Lead

Automatic Speech Recognition

Unsupervised Speech Processing

Language and Dialect Identification

Member

Spoken Language Systems Group

unsupervised speech processing, automatic speech recognition

Kimberle Koile

Research Scientist

E kkoile@csail.mit.edu

Henry Lieberman

Research Scientist

Henry Lieberman is a Research Scientist at MIT CSAIL, in AI and HCI.

E lieber@MEDIA.MIT.EDU

Henry Lieberman is a Research Scientist at MIT CSAIL, in AI and HCI.

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Graduate Student

Privacy and Big Data

E vaik@mit.edu

Lead

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

Member