Algorithms

At a time of rapid advances in intelligence research across many disciplines, the MIT Intelligence Quest will encourage researchers to investigate the societal implications of their work as they pursue hard problems lying beyond the current horizon of what is known.

Institute launches the MIT Intelligence Quest

New Institute-wide initiative will advance human and machine intelligence research.

February 1, 2018

Graduate student Tianli Zhou (left) during a lab meeting. Zhou is studying how to make transportation systems more efficient, particularly through vehicle-sharing services.

Designing vehicle-sharing networks

Graduate student Tianli Zhou works to make transportation systems more efficient.

January 23, 2018

A new theoretical analysis of wireless localization systems represents settings of a wireless network (yellow) and measurement error (purple) as three-dimensional spaces. The intersection of the two spaces defines the network’s optimal configuration.

Location detection when GPS doesn’t work

Theoretical study shows how to make wireless localization much more accurate.

January 22, 2018

Using a novel analytical method they have developed, MIT researchers analyzed raw brain activity data (B). The spectrogram shows decreased noise and increased frequency resolution, or contrast (E and F) compared to standard spectral analysis methods (C and D).

Recalculating time

A novel algorithm enables statistical analysis of time series data.

December 21, 2017

An illustration of real-world behavioral commonalities in raw data of transactions.

Inventing the “Google” for predictive analytics

Platform analyzes big data to answer plain-language business queries in minutes instead of months.

December 19, 2017

“One of our tasks for 2018 is to figure out how to leverage all of this momentum and to build and maintain this very powerful network of data scientists, activists, and organizers,” said MIT mathematics graduate student Lucas Mason-Brown, who organized the recent Data for Black Lives (D4BL) conference, held at the Media Lab.

Calculating the cost of tech-fueled discrimination

Math graduate student’s Data for Black Lives conference provides numbers behind the technologies that enable exclusion.

December 13, 2017

The principal researchers of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's 10 finalists for R&D 100 Awards are seen here with Lincoln Laboratory Director Eric Evans (far left). The principal researchers for the six winning technologies display their award plaques.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory earns six R&D 100 Awards for 2017

Technologies named among the year's most significant innovations address health care, radar performance, aircraft collision avoidance, and 24-hour wide-area surveillance.

December 8, 2017

To determine what products a given customer might like, recommendation systems at websites such as Amazon and Netflix look for other customers who have assigned similar ratings to a similar range of products, and extrapolate from there.

Try this! Researchers devise better recommendation algorithm

Improved recommendation algorithm should work especially well when ratings data are “sparse.”

December 6, 2017

Vivienne Sze and Joel Emer teach Hardware Architecture for Deep Learning, a class in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science that focuses on building specialized hardware for AI.

Building the hardware for the next generation of artificial intelligence

Class taught by Vivienne Sze and Joel Emer brings together traditionally separate disciplines for advances in deep learning.

November 30, 2017

Physicists at MIT and Harvard University have demonstrated a new way to manipulate quantum bits of matter. The researchers report using a system of finely tuned lasers to first trap and then tweak the interactions of 51 individual atoms, or quantum bits.

Scientists demonstrate one of largest quantum simulators yet, with 51 atoms

New technique manipulates atoms into antiferromagnetic state.

November 29, 2017

Ryan Williams, who joined the MIT electrical engineering and computer science faculty with tenure this year, hasn’t solved the problem of P vs. NP — nobody has — but he’s made one of the most important recent contributions toward its solution.

Chasing complexity

Ryan Williams has taken a key step toward solving the biggest problem in theoretical computer science.

November 22, 2017

A new smartphone app analyzes a car’s sounds and vibrations, as measured by the phone’s microphone and accelerometers. “We’re listening to the car’s breathing, and listening for when it starts to snore,” Joshua Siegel says.

Let your car tell you what it needs

MIT team develops software that can tell if tires need air, spark plugs are bad, or air filter needs replacing.

October 25, 2017

A new system from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory works by analyzing light at the edge of walls, which is impacted by the reflections of objects around the corner from the camera.

An algorithm for your blind spot

Using smartphone cameras, system for seeing around corners could help with self-driving cars and search-and-rescue.

October 9, 2017

Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, who negotiated the collaboration on behalf of MIT, speaks during the signing of the agreement with representatives of IBM.

3Q: Anantha Chandrakasan on new MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab

Lab seeks to expand the boundaries of research on artificial intelligence.

September 7, 2017

MIT President L. Rafael Reif, left, and John Kelly III, IBM senior vice president, Cognitive Solutions and Research, shake hands at the conclusion of a signing ceremony establishing the new MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab.

IBM and MIT to pursue joint research in artificial intelligence, establish new MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab

IBM plans to make a 10-year, $240 million investment in new lab with MIT to advance AI hardware, software, and algorithms.