MIT Schwarzman College of Computing welcomes seven new faculty for 2026
Faculty members serve in core computing and shared roles, bringing a wide range of experiences and areas of expertise to the MIT community.
Laboratory for Information and Decisions Systems (LIDS)
Clearing up a robot’s fuzzy memory
A new system identifies and corrects unreliable object descriptions stored in a robot’s memory, improving the robot’s ability to interact with its environment.
MIT affiliates named 2026 Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Fellows
Five MIT faculty members and two additional alumni are honored with fellowships to advance research on beneficial AI.
Q&A: Hey AI, who should I vote for this year?
MIT professors Adam Berinsky and Chara Podimata discuss a new project to track how AI chatbots are responding to questions about the 2026 U.S. midterm elections.
Gunter Stein, control systems and theory expert, dies at 84
Longtime EECS adjunct professor and LIDS researcher was known for an influential essay on the need for engineers to “respect the unstable.”
Q&A: How AI came to model the “messy” human mind
Assistant Professor Benjamin Lindquist studies how engineers deliberately injected randomness into early AI, giving rise to deep-learning models that sometimes hallucinate.
Planning system ensures a robot’s flight path will remain collision-free
This new method, called “SANDO,” could help disaster-response robots navigate dangerous, unknown environments.
Computational tools for society’s most complex challenges
Associate Professor Cathy Wu uses reinforcement learning to help map out improvements to transportation and other multifaceted systems.
This game-playing AI is the new champ at Stratego
Able to defeat top-ranked human players and more efficient than other models, the new system could help decision-makers in military maneuvers or business negotiations.
The effects of an “algorithmic monoculture” depend on the details
In a study focusing on hiring decisions, MIT researchers found the use of a single algorithm by many firms could benefit job seekers in certain situations.
New method enables AI for safety-critical situations
The “HardFlow” algorithm could help generative AI models produce high-quality outputs that obey strict requirements when “pretty close” doesn’t cut it.
Mathematical framework connects biological principles to manufacturable, adaptive materials
The new framework could streamline the design process of robotic grippers or aerospace components that exhibit complex behaviors found in nature.
The benefits of medical AI assistance vary based on user expertise
Study finds non-experts deferred to LLM-based diagnostic assistance, even when it was wrong, while clinicians caught AI errors.
Alexander Rakhlin named director of the MIT Statistics and Data Science Center
An expert in machine learning, statistics, and computation, Rakhlin succeeds Professor Ankur Moitra.
Using reason, again and again
Philosopher Brian Hedden studies decision-making over time — and recently chose to return to alma mater MIT, where he is now connecting ethics and computing.