EECS’ research covers a wide variety of topics in electrical engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence and decision-making.
AI and Society
The future of our society is interwoven with the future of data-driven thinking—most prominently, artificial intelligence is set to reshape every aspect of our lives. Research in this area studies the interface between AI-driven systems and human actors, exploring both the impact of data-driven decision-making on human behavior and experience, and how AI technologies can be used to improve access to opportunities. This research combines a variety of areas including AI, machine learning, economics, social psychology, and law.
AI for Healthcare and Life Sciences
Our goal is to develop AI technologies that will change the landscape of healthcare. This includes early diagnostics, drug discovery, care personalization and management. Building on MIT’s pioneering history in artificial intelligence and life sciences, we are working on algorithms suitable for modeling biological and clinical data across a range of modalities including imaging, text and genomics.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Our research covers a wide range of topics of this fast-evolving field, advancing how machines learn, predict, and control, while also making them secure, robust and trustworthy. Research covers both the theory and applications of ML. This broad area studies ML theory (algorithms, optimization, …), statistical learning (inference, graphical models, causal analysis, …), deep learning, reinforcement learning, symbolic reasoning ML systems, as well as diverse hardware implementations of ML.
Biological and Medical Devices and Systems
We develop the technology and systems that will transform the future of biology and healthcare. Specific areas include biomedical sensors and electronics, nano- and micro-technologies, imaging, and computational modeling of disease.
Communications Systems
We develop the next generation of wired and wireless communications systems, from new physical principles (e.g., light, terahertz waves) to coding and information theory, and everything in between.
Computational Fabrication and Manufacturing
We bring some of the most powerful tools in computation to bear on design problems, including modeling, simulation, processing and fabrication.
Computer Architecture
We design the next generation of computer systems. Working at the intersection of hardware and software, our research studies how to best implement computation in the physical world. We design processors that are faster, more efficient, easier to program, and secure. Our research covers systems of all scales, from tiny Internet-of-Things devices with ultra-low-power consumption to high-performance servers and datacenters that power planet-scale online services. We design both general-purpose processors and accelerators that are specialized to particular application domains, like machine learning and storage. We also design Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools to facilitate the development of such systems.
Educational Technology
Educational technology combines both hardware and software to enact global change, making education accessible in unprecedented ways to new audiences. We develop the technology that makes better understanding possible.
Electronic, Magnetic, Optical and Quantum Materials and Devices
Our research spans a wide range of materials that form the next generation of devices, and includes groundbreaking research on graphene & 2D materials, quantum computing, MEMS & NEMS, and new substrates for computation.
Energy
Our research focuses on solving challenges related to the transduction, transmission, and control of energy and energy systems. We develop new materials for energy storage, devices and power electronics for harvesting, generation and processing of energy, and control of large-scale energy systems.
Graphics and Vision
The shared mission of Visual Computing is to connect images and computation, spanning topics such as image and video generation and analysis, photography, human perception, touch, applied geometry, and more.
Human-Computer Interaction
The focus of our research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is inventing new systems and technology that lie at the interface between people and computation, and understanding their design, implementation, and societal impact.
Information Science and Systems
This broad research theme covered activities across all aspects of systems that process information, and the underlying science and mathematics, and includes communications, networking & information theory; numerical and computational simulation and prototyping; signal processing and inference; medical imaging; data science, statistics and inference.
Integrated Circuits and Systems
Our field deals with the design and creation of sophisticated circuits and systems for applications ranging from computation to sensing.
Nanoscale Materials, Devices, and Systems
Our research focuses on the creation of materials and devices at the nano scale to create novel systems across a wide variety of application areas.
Natural Language and Speech Processing
Our research encompasses all aspects of speech and language processing—ranging from the design of fundamental machine learning methods to the design of advanced applications that can extract information from documents, translate between languages, and execute instructions in real-world environments.
Optics + Photonics
Our work focuses on materials, devices, and systems for optical and photonic applications, with applications in communications and sensing, femtosecond optics, laser technologies, photonic bandgap fibers and devices, laser medicine and medical imaging, and millimeter-wave and terahertz devices.
Optimization and Game Theory
Research in this area focuses on developing efficient and scalable algorithms for solving large scale optimization problems in engineering, data science and machine learning. Our work also studies optimal decision making in networked settings, including communication networks, energy systems and social networks. The multi-agent nature of many of these systems also has led to several research activities that rely on game-theoretic approaches.
Programming Languages and Software Engineering
We develop new approaches to programming, whether that takes the form of programming languages, tools, or methodologies to improve many aspects of applications and systems infrastructure.
Quantum Computing, Communication, and Sensing
Our work focuses on developing the next substrate of computing, communication and sensing. We work all the way from new materials to superconducting devices to quantum computers to theory.
Robotics
Our research focuses on robotic hardware and algorithms, from sensing to control to perception to manipulation.
Security and Cryptography
Our research is focused on making future computer systems more secure. We bring together a broad spectrum of cross-cutting techniques for security, from theoretical cryptography and programming-language ideas, to low-level hardware and operating-systems security, to overall system designs and empirical bug-finding. We apply these techniques to a wide range of application domains, such as blockchains, cloud systems, Internet privacy, machine learning, and IoT devices, reflecting the growing importance of security in many contexts.
Signal Processing
Signal processing focuses on algorithms and hardware for analyzing, modifying and synthesizing signals and data, across a wide variety of application domains. As a technology it plays a key role in virtually every aspect of modern life including for example entertainment, communications, travel, health, defense and finance.
Systems and Networking
From distributed systems and databases to wireless, the research conducted by the systems and networking group aims to improve the performance, robustness, and ease of management of networks and computing systems.
Systems Theory, Control, and Autonomy
Our theoretical research includes quantification of fundamental capabilities and limitations of feedback systems, inference and control over networks, and development of practical methods and algorithms for decision making under uncertainty.
Theory of Computation
Theory of Computation (TOC) studies the fundamental strengths and limits of computation, how these strengths and limits interact with computer science and mathematics, and how they manifest themselves in society, biology, and the physical world.