Research

Impact Areas

Lead

Una-May O'Reilly

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.

+23

Leads

Srini Devadas

Daniel Sanchez

Armando Solar-Lezama

Arvind

Research Areas

Computer Architecture

Impact Areas

Lead

Srini Devadas

Daniel Sanchez

Armando Solar-Lezama

Arvind

+23

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.

+16

Leads

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Tim Kraska

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Lead

Sam Madden

Michael Stonebraker

Tim Kraska

+16

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

Human-Computer Interaction

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

Human-Computer Interaction

Education

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

Big Data

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

Education

Lead

Daniel Jackson

20 Project Results

Project

Adversarial Cyber Security

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

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. Now one of the main challenges is to make the system more usable and understandable for the user.

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

Howard Shrobe

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

Big Data

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

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

Programming Languages & Verification

Karen Sollins

Project

Kami: A Modular Deductive Hardware Verification Platform

A framework to support implementing, specifying, verifying, and compiling hardware designs, modularly

Adam Chlipala

Leads

Adam Chlipala

Research Areas

Computer Architecture

Impact Areas

Adam Chlipala

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

Joel Brenner

Leads

Joel Brenner

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Joel Brenner

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

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

Decentralized Information Group

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

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.

Ioan Tomescu Nicolescu

Leads

Ioan Tomescu Nicolescu

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Model-Based Embedded and Robotics Systems Group

Ioan Tomescu Nicolescu

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

Software Design Group

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

Daniel Jackson

Leads

Daniel Jackson

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Daniel Jackson

Project

Splinter: Practical Private Queries on Public Data

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

Leads

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Project

Towards Adversarially Robust Deep Neural Networks

We work towards a principled understanding of the non-robust nature of deep learning classifiers and build approaches to training reliably robust classifiers.

Aleksander Madry

Leads

Aleksander Madry

Research Areas

Graphics & Vision

Impact Areas

Aleksander Madry

Project

Using Bitcoin to prevent identify theft

System piggybacks on the digital currency’s security protocols to thwart hijacked servers.

Ioan Tomescu Nicolescu

Srini Devadas

Leads

Ioan Tomescu Nicolescu

Srini Devadas

Research Areas

Computer Architecture

Impact Areas

Big Data

Ioan Tomescu Nicolescu

Srini Devadas

Project

Vuvuzela: Metadata private messaging

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

David Lazar

Nickolai Zeldovich

Leads

David Lazar

Nickolai Zeldovich

Research Areas

Impact Areas

Simit: A Language for Computing on Sparse Systems

David Lazar

Nickolai Zeldovich

19 People Results

PI
Core/Dual

Saman Amarasinghe

Professor

Compilers, architectures, software engineering

E saman@csail.mit.edu

T 253-8879

Lead

Commit Group

Tiramisu Compiler

Member

Taco: The Tensor Algebra Compiler

Halide

OpenTuner: An Extensible Framework for Program Autotuning

Program Performance Prediction with Deep Learning

Compilers, architectures, software engineering

PI
Core/Dual

Tim Berners-Lee

Professor

Systems, privacy, inventor of the World Wide Web

E timbl@w3.org

T 253-5702

Lead

Decentralized Information Group

World Wide Web Consortium

Solid: Social Linked Data

Systems, privacy, inventor of the World Wide Web

PI
Core/Dual

Adam Chlipala

Associate Professor

Programming languages, formal methods, security & privacy, systems

E adamc@csail.mit.edu

T 324-8439

Lead

Kami: A Modular Deductive Hardware Verification Platform

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

FSCQ: File-system verification

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

Advanced Network Architecture Group

Keeping America Safe: Toward More Secure Networks for Critical Sectors

Member

Internet architectures, communications policy, security

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

Gregory Falco

Postdoctoral Associate

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

Scaling Filesystems To Many Cores

Member

Noria: a new data-flow system for web applications

FSCQ: File-system verification

Systems, networks, architectures

David Lazar

Graduate Student

David Lazar is a PhD student in systems security

E lazard@mit.edu

RM 32-G978B

Lead

Vuvuzela: Metadata private messaging

Member

David Lazar is a PhD student in systems security

Ilia Lebedev

Graduate Student

E ilebedev@csail.mit.edu

Lead

Sanctum Secure Processor

Member

PrivacyML - A Privacy Preserving Framework for Machine Learning

Sanctum Secure Processor

Vaikkunth Mugunthan

Graduate Student

Privacy and Big Data

E vaik@mit.edu

Lead

Member

Decentralized Information Group

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

Anyscale Learning for All ALFA

MOOC Learner Project: Data science for e-learning

Adversarial Cyber Security

GIGABEATS: Data science for medical sensor data

Applied AI and ML in cybersecurity, healthcare, education

PI
Core/Dual

Martin Rinard

Professor

Systems, programming languages and verification

E rinard@csail.mit.edu

T 258-6922

Member

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

Distributed Robotics Laboratory

Member

Keys Under Doormats

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

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

Member

Architectures, cybersecurity, web policy

PI
Core/Dual

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Associate Professor

Cryptography, encryption

E vinodv@csail.mit.edu

T 324-8444

Lead

Splinter: Practical Private Queries on Public Data

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

The Car Can Explain!

Keeping America Safe: Toward More Secure Networks for Critical Sectors

Keys Under Doormats

Member

Data Systems Group

Web policy, cybersecurity, web architecture

Hanshen Xiao

Graduate Student

E hsxiao@MIT.EDU

Lead

Distributed Co-prime Sampling Algorithms

Privacy-Preserving Decentralized Optimization

PI
Core/Dual

Nickolai Zeldovich

Associate Professor

Operating systems, hardware, programming languages

E nickolai@csail.mit.edu

T 253-6005

Lead

Scaling Filesystems To Many Cores

Vuvuzela: Metadata private messaging

Member