Data

Researchers used sample images, like the ones on the top row, to identify several visual features that are highly correlated with judgments that a particular area is safe or unsafe. The left side shows a low level of safety while the right shows a high level. Highlighted areas on the middle row show “unsafe” areas while the bottom row shows “safe” areas in the image.

Quantifying urban revitalization

Combining cellphone data with perceptions of public spaces could help guide urban planning.

October 24, 2016

“The goal of all this is to present the interesting stuff to the data scientists so that they can more quickly address all these new data sets that are coming in,” says Max Kanter MEng ’15.

Automating big-data analysis

With new algorithms, data scientists could accomplish in days what has traditionally taken months.

October 21, 2016

“MIT is wonderful because in addition to [finding] an amazing home in economics, I can talk with and learn from a lot of people on the science side,” says Heidi Williams, the Class of 1957 Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Economics.
MIT professor Heidi Williams

Making a splash in health care economics

Heidi Williams builds all-new data sets to answer questions about innovation and biomedical research.

October 18, 2016

“If there's any place that I can do the weird stuff that I like to do, it would be in academia, and it would be at MIT,” says PhD student Lily Bui. “I'm not quite satisfied with being pigeonholed into one role, and I think that's just going to stay the case for the rest of my life.”

Harnessing the power of citizens

PhD student Lily Bui works with communities around the world to gather data from the bottom up.

October 12, 2016

“We want to see, in the next five years or so, the amount of time you need to search for parking spot in a city drop from around 35 to 40 minutes, to less than five minutes,” says Smarking co-founder Wen Sang PhD ’14.

Optimizing parking in the busiest places

Data-analytics platform helps parking managers meet driver demand in high-traffic areas.

October 12, 2016

Cambridge Mobile Telematics co-founders Hari Balakrishnan (left) and Samuel Madden (right).

Rewarding Boston’s safest driver

Mayor Martin Walsh announces a competition aimed at improving Boston driving with an app developed by an MIT spinout.

October 5, 2016

President L. Rafael Reif speaks at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) showcase. In his remarks, Reif noted that IDSS is “a unit that can magnify individual talents through collaborations, a unit that aspires to generate groundbreaking ways to understand society’s most difficult problems and lead us to badly-needed solutions.”

How data can help change the world

At IDSS celebration, speakers explore how data can be brought to bear on global challenges.

September 26, 2016

The Laboratory for Social Machines, part of the MIT Media Lab, has launched a project called the Electome that charts Twitter in unique detail.

Q&A: How Twitter explains the 2016 election

“Electome” project charts the national conversation in unique detail.

September 26, 2016

One year on, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society looks ahead

Event and new IDSS projects will provide insights into some of society's most pressing data challenges.

September 19, 2016

MIT spinout EverVest has built a data-analytics platform that gives investors rapid, accurate cash-flow models and financial risk analyses for renewable-energy projects.

Calculating the financial risks of renewable energy

Financial-modeling software for sustainable-infrastructure projects could boost investment in sector.

September 15, 2016

Researchers have designed a new programming language that lets application developers manage memory more efficiently in programs that deal with scattered data points in large data sets. In tests on several common algorithms, programs written in the new language were four times as fast as those written in existing languages.

Faster parallel computing

New programming language delivers fourfold speedups on problems common in the age of big data.

September 13, 2016

“Right now, the best thing I can do is live the questions,” says Nils Wernerfelt, a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Economics.

Surrounded by questions

PhD student Nils Wernerfelt deploys the tools of economics to address his many questions about the world.

September 8, 2016

A new technique invented at MIT can precisely measure the growth of many individual cells simultaneously. “The device provides new insights into how cells grow and respond to drugs,” MIT professor Scott Manalis says.

Microchip enables fast, precise measurement of single-cell growth

Device that measures growth of many individual cells simultaneously could lead to rapid tests for antibiotics.

September 5, 2016

A study led by MIT researchers suggests that using mobile-phone data to track people’s movement provides a deeper picture of exposure to pollution in urban settings, compared to only studying air-quality levels in fixed places.

Measuring exposure to pollution

Mobile-phone data helps researchers study an urban problem in greater detail.

September 1, 2016

Researchers from MIT and Ford Motor have developed a new computational system that uses cellphone location data to infer urban mobility patterns.

Inferring urban travel patterns from cellphone data

Big-data analysis could give city planners timelier, more accurate alternatives to commuter surveys.

August 29, 2016

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