Research

Impact Areas

Lead

Costis Daskalakis

Erik Demaine

Michael Goemans

Piotr Indyk

David Karger

Jonathan Kelner

Tom Leighton

Charles E. Leiserson

Aleksander Madry

Ankur Moitra

Ronitt Rubinfeld

Nir Shavit

Ryan Williams

Virginia Vassilevska Williams

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

Research Group

Complexity Theory Group

Our interests span quantum complexity theory, barriers to solving P versus NP, theoretical computer science with a focus on probabilistically checkable proofs (PCP), pseudo-randomness, coding theory, and algorithms.

Leads

Shafi Goldwasser

Ronitt Rubinfeld

Michael Sipser

Ryan Williams

Virginia Vassilevska Williams

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Shafi Goldwasser

Ronitt Rubinfeld

Michael Sipser

Ryan Williams

Virginia Vassilevska Williams

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

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

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

Wireless

Lead

Shafi Goldwasser

Silvio Micali

Ronald Rivest

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Butler Lampson

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

Lecturers

Lecturers in CSAIL

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Research Group

Medical Vision Group

We develop new algorithms for medical image analysis and visualization of medical imagery.

Polina Golland

Leads

Polina Golland

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Polina Golland

Research Group

Multicore Algorithmics

We develop techniques for designing, implementing, and reasoning about multiprocessor algorithms, in particular concurrent data structures for multicore machines and the mathematical foundations of the computation models that govern their behavior.

Nir Shavit

Leads

Nir Shavit

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Nir Shavit

Research Group

Multimodal Understanding Group

Our objective is to build techniques, software, and hardware that enable natural interaction with
computation.

Randall Davis

Leads

Randall Davis

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Randall Davis

Research Group

Quantum Information Science Group

Our research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, and computational complexity theory more generally.

Peter Shor

Leads

Peter Shor

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Peter Shor

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

Impact Areas

Lead

Costis Daskalakis

+20

Costis Daskalakis

Research Group

Theory of Distributed Systems Group

We work on a wide range of problems in distributed computing theory. We study algorithms and lower bounds for typical problems that arise in distributed systems---like resource allocation, implementing shared memory abstractions, and reliable communication.

Nancy Lynch

Leads

Nancy Lynch

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Nancy Lynch

Research Group

Tidor Lab

We focus on the analysis of complex biological systems at both the molecular level and the systems level.

Bruce Tidor

Leads

Bruce Tidor

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Learning and Intelligent Systems

Lead

Bruce Tidor

26 Project Results

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

Weiss Laboratory for Synthetic Biology

Entertainment

Leslie Kaelbling

Tomas Lozano-Perez

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

Learning and Intelligent Systems

Project

Bayesian Optimization for Global Optimization of Expensive Black-box Functions

Machine Learning

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

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

Clinical Intervention Prediction with Neural Networks

Integrating multi-modal clinical data and using recurrent and convolution neural networks to predict when patients will need important interventions.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Cryptography and Information Security Group

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

Determining Wikipedia's Influence on Science

Supertech Research Group

Wikipedia is one of the most widely accessed encyclopedia sites in the world, including by scientists. Our project aims to investigate just how far Wikipedia’s influence goes in shaping science.

Neil Thompson

Charles E. Leiserson

Leads

Neil Thompson

Charles E. Leiserson

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Neil Thompson

Charles E. Leiserson

Project

Distributed Robot Garden

The robot garden provides an aesthetically pleasing educational platform that can visualize computer science concepts and encourage young students to pursue programming and robotics.

Leads

Joseph DelPreto

Lindsay Sanneman

Daniela Rus

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Entertainment

Project

Drones that Drive

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

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Transportation

Project

Drug Target Identification Via Computational Modeling

Tidor Lab

We use computational models of biological pathways in disease to estimate the range of possible responses to various hypothetical drugs, given patient variability and limited pathway-relevant data.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Weiss Laboratory for Synthetic Biology

Project

Flexible cellular platforms for reconfigurable biocircuits

Existing methods for cloning and recombination of DNA enable construction of arbitrary sequences. However, the sequential nature of these techniques makes them time-consuming and expensive. Furthermore, while the transformation of an existing plasmid into a host strain can be reliable when a selection marker is used, there are many current limitations: the number of different plasmids that can be co-transformed is limited by the choice of markers and compatible origins of replication; plasmids are less stable than chromosomal DNA and are difficult to maintain indefinitely without mutation; and cistronic interactions cannot be designed since each new nucleotide sequence added is on an unconnected DNA molecule. To overcome these limitations, we are designing reconfigurable chromosomes consisting of both fixed and variable regions. While the fixed region is carefully optimized and tuned ahead of time, the variable region can be modified in the field, at the point-of-use, leading to rapid and on-demand realization of novel biocircuits with many different phenotypes.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Geometric Data Processing Group

Project

Geometry and topology for scientific computing and shape analysis

Computer Graphics Group

Developing state-of-the-art tools that process 3D surfaces and volumes

Justin Solomon

Leads

Justin Solomon

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Data-Driven Inference Group

Justin Solomon

Project

Hidden Influencers, Risk and Causes of Infection

We aim to study the causes and transmission modes of infectious diseases among members of a community in the presence of hidden, asymptomatic spreaders of the pathogen.

Maggie Makar

John Guttag

Leads

Maggie Makar

John Guttag

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Maggie Makar

John Guttag

Project

Metagenomic Binning Through Low-Density Hashing

Our goal is to develop better metagenomic binning by origin species of fragments of sequenced environmental DNA.

Bonnie Berger

Leads

Bonnie Berger

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Bonnie Berger

Project

Population-level Tumor Growth Inhibition Modeling

Tidor Lab

We develop, parameterize, and validate a model for tumor growth inhibition using in vivo mouse data and study the effects of modeling uncertainty and inter-individual variability on drug candidate efficacy predictions.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Data-Driven Inference Group

Project

Predicting Adverse Events Across Changing Electronic Health Record Systems

Transitioning machine learning models across electronic health record (EHR) versions can be improved by mapping different EHR encodings to a common vocabulary.

John Guttag

Peter Szolovits

Leads

John Guttag

Peter Szolovits

Research Areas

Impact Areas

John Guttag

Peter Szolovits

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

Wireless

Hanshen Xiao

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

Computational Connectomics Group

Project

Reconstructing Neural Circuits from Mammalian Brain

We develop algorithms, systems and software architectures for automating reconstruction of accurate representations of neural tissue structures, such as nanometer-scale neurons' morphology and synaptic connections in the mammalian cortex.

Yaron Meirovitch

Nir Shavit

Leads

Yaron Meirovitch

Nir Shavit

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Yaron Meirovitch

Nir Shavit

Project

Reliable and Robust Machine Learning

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

Robot Compiler

The Robot Compiler allows non-engineering users to rapidly fabricate customized robots, facilitating the proliferation of robots in everyday life. It thereby marks an important step towards the realization of personal robots that have captured imaginations for decades.

Leads

Joseph DelPreto

Andrew Spielberg

Daniela Rus

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Clinical Decision-Making Group

Internet of Things

Project

Semi-Supervised Regression with Cycle Wasserstein Regression GANs

Using adversarial signals and a cycle-consistency based regularization, we can supplement paired regression tasks with unpaired data to improve regression performance.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Structure-based Inhibitor Design Against ZIKV Protease

Tidor Lab

This project uses computational biology and chemistry tools to design a pharmaceutical to combat the Zika Virus.

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Towards Context-Aware Functional Genomics

Computation and Biology

We aim to develop a context-aware data-driven functional genomics framework that can characterize tissue-specific gene representations, provide context-aware genotype to phenotype mapping, and enable network-based exploration of disease genetics.

Bonnie Berger

Leads

Bonnie Berger

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Natural Language Processing Group

Bonnie Berger

17 People Results

Leandro Agudelo

Research Scientist

Systems Genomics, CompBio, Topological Integrative Biology, Biology

E lagudelo@csail.mit.edu

Systems Genomics, CompBio, Topological Integrative Biology, Biology

PI
Core/Dual

Regina Barzilay

Professor

Natural language processing, machine learning

E regina@csail.mit.edu

T 258-5706

Lead

Aspect-Augmented Adversarial Networks for Domain Adaptation

Member

Vertical AI Community of Research

Covering All K-mers Using Joker Characters

Natural language processing, machine learning

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

Computation Structures Group

Cryptography and Information Security Group

Computational biology, genomics

Azim Dehghani Amirabad

Postdoctoral Associate

Machine learning, Bioinformatics

E azimd@csail.mit.edu

Machine learning, Bioinformatics

Barış Ekim

Graduate Student

E ekim@csail.mit.edu

PI
Core/Dual

Shafi Goldwasser

Professor

Theory, cryptography, cybersecurity, complexity

E shafi@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5914

Lead

Complexity Theory Group

Member

Computation Structures Group

Computational Connectomics Group

Data-Driven Inference Group

Theory, cryptography, cybersecurity, complexity

PI
Core/Dual

John Guttag

Professor

Machine learning, medicine, data-driven inference

E guttag@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6022

Lead

Hidden Influencers, Risk and Causes of Infection

Predicting Adverse Events Across Changing Electronic Health Record Systems

Machine Learning for Insights in Basketball Strategy

Detecting Voice Misuse to Diagnose Disorders

Member

Systems Community of Research

Machine learning, medicine, data-driven inference

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

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

Systems Community of Research

Helping people manage information

Konstantin Krismer

Graduate Student

E krismer@mit.edu

Member

Computational Genomics Group

PI
Core/Dual

Charles E. Leiserson

Professor

Algorithms, parallel computing, performance engineering

E cel@csail.mit.edu

T 253-5833

Lead

Supertech Research Group

Performance Engineering of Cache Profilers

CilkPride

A Simplified and Extensible Cilk Runtime for Research

Determining Wikipedia's Influence on Science

Tapir

Member

Systems Community of Research

Algorithms, parallel computing, performance engineering

PI
Core/Dual

Albert R. Meyer

Professor Emeritus

Programming languages, theory, complexity, online education

E meyer@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6024

Programming languages, theory, complexity, online education

PI
Core/Dual

Ronald Rivest

Institute Professor

Cryptography, cybersecurity, RSA public-key encryption

E rivest@mit.edu

T 253-5880

Lead

Cryptography and Information Security Group

Member

Computing & Society Community of Research

Cryptography, cybersecurity, RSA public-key encryption

Samuel Sledzieski

Graduate Student

E samsl@csail.mit.edu

Joshua Tenenbaum

Professor

Computational cognitive science, machine learning

E jbt@csail.mit.edu

T 452-2010

RM 46-4015

Lead

Computational Cognitive Science Group

Member

Center for Brains, Minds and Machines

Single-Image 3D Interpreter Network

3D Generative Adversarial Networks

Embodied Intelligence Community of Research

Visual Computing Community of Research

Computational cognitive science, machine learning

Yu Wang

Graduate Student

E wangyu9@mit.edu

RM 32-D475A

Member

Geometric Data Processing Group

Geometry and topology for scientific computing and shape analysis

PI
Core/Dual

Ryan Williams

Associate Professor

Theory, algorithms, complexity.

E rrw@mit.edu

Lead

Complexity Theory Group

Member