Fact Sheet

QUICK FACTS

  • Year founded: 1985
  • Graduate Concentration: Media Arts and Sciences
  • Number of Graduate Students (2010-2011): 139 (65 master's, 74 PhD)
  • Number of Faculty and Principal Investigators: 27
  • Number of sponsors: 70+
  • Annual operating budget: approx. $35 million

The MIT Media Lab applies an unorthodox research approach to envision the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life—technologies that promise to fundamentally transform our most basic notions of human capabilities. Unconstrained by traditional disciplines, Lab designers, engineers, artists, and scientists work atelier-style in close to 30 research groups conducting more than 350 projects that range from neuroengineering, to how children learn, to developing the city car of the future. Lab researchers foster a unique culture of learning by doing, developing technologies that empower people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all societies, to design and invent new possibilities for themselves and their communities.

ACADEMICS

Unlike other labs at MIT, the Media Lab comprises both a degree-granting academic program and a research program. Students with backgrounds ranging from engineering, to physics, to education, to music make up the graduate student community at the Lab. In addition, some 200 undergraduates come to work at the Media Lab each year through MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP).

SPONSORS AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

The Media Lab relies upon a robust relationship with its sponsors. Unique among the laboratories, centers, and research programs at MIT, full sponsors of the Media Lab have the opportunity to share in all of the Lab's intellectual property, license-fee free and royalty free. Non-sponsors are precluded from making use of the Lab's developments for at least two years after the filing of a patent or copyright.

SPONSOR SUPPORT

The Media Lab's focus on corporate support reflects the Lab's commitment to collaborative research that has possibilities for a wide range of applications, and to technology transfer that moves research results out of the Lab and into worldwide use. Businesses represented by the Lab's sponsors range from electronics to entertainment, furniture to finance, and toys to telecommunications.

FACILITIES

The Media Lab houses a gigabit fiber-optic plant that connects a heterogeneous network of computers, ranging from fine-grained, embedded processors to supercomputers. The rapid prototyping resources include 3-D printing, injection molding, and PC board fabrication. There are studios for audio and video, and laboratories for DNA labeling, new sensors, micro-encapsulation, quantum computing, and perceptual studies. The Lab has begun the 21st century with a major expansion: a complex that approximately doubles its space. The new building is adjacent, and connected, to the Wiesner Building.

HISTORY

The Media Lab was founded in 1985 by MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte and the late Jerome Wiesner (former science advisor to President John F. Kennedy and former President of MIT), who foresaw the coming convergence of computing, publishing, and broadcast, fueled by changes in the communications industry. As this convergence accelerated, it spurred interconnected developments in the unusual range of disciplines that the Lab brought together, including cognition, electronic music, graphic design, video, and holography, as well as work in computation and human-machine interfaces.

ADMINISTRATION

  • Joi Ito, Director
  • Hiroshi Ishii, Associate Director
  • Andrew Lippman, Associate Director
  • Henry Holtzman, Chief Knowledge Officer
  • Mitchel Resnick, Academic Head—Program in Media Arts and Sciences
  • Pattie Maes, Associate Academic Head—Program in Media Arts and Sciences
  • Mitchel Resnick, Chair—Program in Media Arts and Sciences
  • V. Michael Bove, Jr., Undergraduate Officer—Program in Media Arts and Sciences
  • Chris Schmandt, UROP Coordinator—Program in Media Arts and Sciences
  • Linda Peterson, Director of Academic Program Administration
  • Paula Anzer, Director of Business Development
  • Ellen Hoffman, Director of Communications
  • Greg Tucker, Director of Facilities
  • Christina Williams, Director of Finance and Development
  • Martha Collins, Director of Human Resources
  • Michail Bletsas, Director of Network and Computing Systems
  • Felice Gardner, Director of Sponsor Management

MAILING ADDRESS

MIT Media Lab
77 Mass. Ave., E14/E15
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 USA

PHYSICAL ADDRESS

The Media Lab complex comprises two buildings:

Building E14, 75 Amherst Street
Wiesner Building (E15), 20 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
617.253.0300

LAB OVERVIEW

Download MIT Media Lab Overview document
PDF, 2 pages