Research
Human Dynamics

Exploring how social networks can influence our lives in business, health, governance, and technology adoption and diffusion
Research
Camera Culture

Making the invisible visible–inside our bodies, around us, and beyond–for health, work, and connection
Research
City Science

Looking beyond smart cities
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Future Worlds

Future Worlds | Design and action for the future we want to live in
Research
Viral Communications

People and intelligent machines in a creative, symbiotic loop
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Cultivating Creativity

Cultivating Creativity | Catalyzing a global movement enabling everyone to unlock and unleash their individual and collective creativity
Research
Personal Robots

Building intelligent personified technologies that collaborate with people to help them learn, thrive, and flourish.
Research
Community Biotechnology

Community Biotechnology
Research
Affective Computing

Advancing human wellbeing by developing new ways to communicate, understand, and respond to emotion
Project Research

Drone package delivery and consumer privacy

Door-to-door drone package deliveries are taking off across the US.  In this work we expose and study a newly emerging privacy is…
Publication Research

Drone delivery and the value of customer privacy: A discrete choice experiment with U.S. consumers

Alex Berke, Geoffrey Ding, Christopher Chin, Karthik Gopalakrishnan, Kent Larson, Hamsa Balakrishnan, Max Z. Li, Drone delivery and the value of customer privacy: A discrete choice experiment with U.S. consumers, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 157, 2023, 104391, ISSN 0968-090X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2023.104391.
Research
Sculpting Evolution

Cultivating wisdom through evolutionary and ecological engineering
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Connected Mind + Body

Connected Mind + Body | Revolutionizing the future of mental and physical wellbeing
Publication Research

Splintering with distributions: A stochastic decoy scheme for private computation

Vepakomma, P., Balla, J., Raskar, R., "Splintering with distributions: A stochastic decoy scheme for private computation." 6 Jul 2020.
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Decentralized Society

Decentralized Society | Architecting the new internet for the good of the people
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Life with AI

Life with AI | Designing the future of smart systems to improve the human experience
Publication Research

Harnessing digital federation platforms and data cooperatives to empower SMEs and local small communities

Bühler, M. et al., 2023. Harnessing Digital Federation Platforms and Data Cooperatives to Empower SMEs and Local Small Communities, OBSERVER RESEARCH FOUNDATION. India.
Publication Research

Effects of Privacy-Inducing Noise on Welfare and Influence of Referendum Systems

Suat Evren, Praneeth Vepakomma
Project Research

Blockchain: A new framework for robotic swarm systems

Swarms of robots will revolutionize many applications, from targeted material delivery to farming. However, the characteristics that make t…
Research
Digital Currency Initiative (DCI)

Digital Currency Initiative
Inventing the future of digitally augmented objects and environments.
Archived
Archived
Research
Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge
Publication Research

Privacy Limitations Of Interest-based Advertising On The Web: A Post-mortem Empirical Analysis Of Google’s FLoC

Alex Berke and Dan Calacci. 2022. Privacy Limitations of Interest-based Advertising on The Web: A Post-mortem Empirical Analysis of Google’s FLoC. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ’22), November 7–11, 2022, Los Angeles, CA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3548606.3560626
Center for Civic Media
Archived
Archived
Research
Civic Media

Creating technology for social change
Article Research

Butlr's people-sensing platform is designed as Google Analytics for buildings

In Dezeen, learn more about Butlr, a spinoff co-founded by former Labbers Honghao Deng and Jiani Zeng.
Publication Research

The Tradeoff Between the Utility and Risk of Location Data and Implications for Public Good

Calacci, Dan, Alex Berke, Kent Larson, Sandy Pentland. "The tradeoff between the utility and risk of location data and implications for public good." Presented at the Oxford & London School of Economics Connected Life conference. (2019). https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09350
Project Research

Private Location Data for the Public Good and Urban Understanding

There is a continuous and ubiquitous collection of precise, timestamped, geolocation data from apps and devices, being amassed by private f…
Article Research

The New Rules of Data Privacy

Hossein Rahnama, a visiting professor at the Media Lab, and Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland explore the new rules of data privacy.
Article Research

Waze for our Pandemic Journey

Ramesh Raskar discuses potential approaches to creating apps that can leverage citizen engagement to improve government responses to crises.
How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants.
Archived
Article Research

Contact tracing: So promising. So invasive.

Kevin Esvelt, master's student Anika Ullah, and other experts talk about bi-directional contact tracing, privacy, and halting Covid-19.
Project Research

iNonymize: Empathetic Anonymity in Tele-Mental Health Using AI Generated Avatars

This project was selected to represent MIT at the Microsoft Design Expo 2020 on ‘Healthier Futures.’ iNonymizeA tele-mental health pla…
Article Research

Paper cards and digital codes target vaccination chaos

An MIT-developed vaccination card aims to cut through vaccine distribution chaos while preserving patient privacy.
Project Research

DAMS: Differentially Private Sketching Data Structures

We propose an improved private count-mean-sketch data structure and show its applicability to differentially private contact trac…
Publication Research

DAMS: Meta-estimation of private sketch data structures for differentially private COVID-19 contact tracing

DAMS: Meta-estimation of private sketch data structures for differentially private COVID-19 contact tracing, Praneeth Vepakomma, Subha Nawer Pushpita and Ramesh Raskar, PPML (Privacy Preserving Machine Learning workshop) at NeurIPS
Project Research

[bike] swarm

As bikes navigate city streets after dark, they are often equipped with lights. The lights make the bikes visible to cars or other bikers, …
Project Research

Safe Paths

Papers from SafePaths: https://github.com/PrivateKit/PrivacyDocumentsSafe Paths is an MIT-led, free, open source technology that …
Project Research

Split Learning: Distributed and collaborative learning

Split Learning: Distributed deep learning without sharing raw data Project Page: https://splitlearning.github.io/Abstract: C…
Project Research

Splintering with distributions: A stochastic decoy scheme for private computation

We present a stochastic scheme for splitting the client data into privatized shares that are transmitted to the server in such settings. Th…
Project Research

Corporate surveillance of the commons + Amazon Ring

As of August 2020, Ring has active partnerships with over 1400 law enforcement agencies across the US. These partnerships allow law enforce…
Thesis Research

From Private Location Data to Public Good

Berke, A. (2020). From private location data to public good. (Masters thesis). MIT Media Lab.
Publication Research

Urban Mobility Swarms: A Scalable Implementation

Berke A., Nawyn J., Lengeling T.S., Larson K. (2020) Urban Mobility Swarms: A Scalable Implementation. In: Arai K., Kapoor S., Bhatia R. (eds) Intelligent Computing. SAI 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1229. Springer, Cham
Archived
Research
New Media Medicine

How radical new collaborations will catalyze a revolution in health.
Article Research

Episode 19: COVID-19 Update - Jaleesa Trapp - Flaws in Facial Recognition

Jaleesa Trapp talks to Brittney Gallagher about how she works to create equitable spaces for STEM learning experiences.
Article Research

MIT professor wants to shift power to the people by building local data collectives

"Building the New Economy" envisions data co-ops to make it easier for people to control and analyze their own financial and health data.
Archived
Project Research

Let's Talk Privacy: Exploring how privacy and data governance policies translate into practice

Let’s Talk Privacy explores how the implementation of privacy and data governance policies might impact a variety of fields.Project Let’s T…
Archived
Post Research

From legislation to implementation: Exploring how to prototype privacy bills through human-centered policymaking + design

The rise of data privacy breaches and a look into policies that address these challenges
Publication Research

Contact Tracing Technologies: Methods and trade-offs

Alex Berke and Kent Larson, City Science group, MIT Media Lab (2020).
Article Research

The perfect privacy storm

New issues in privacy debate with technology and contact-tracing.
Project Research

Assessing Disease Exposure Risk With Location Histories And Protecting Privacy

Governments and researchers around the world are implementing digital contact tracing solutions to stem the spread of infectious disease, n…
Publication Research

Assessing Disease Exposure Risk with Location Data: A Proposal for Cryptographic Preservation of Privacy

Alex Berke, Michiel Bakker, Praneeth Vepakomma, Kent Larson, Alex `Sandy' Pentland. (March 31 2020). "Assessing Disease Exposure Risk with Location Data: A Proposal for Cryptographic Preservation of Privacy." Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.14412
Post Research

Family-Friendly Data Privacy + AI Activities: Interactive lessons to help kids learn and design with data privacy in mind

This is a unique time to engage and teach children about the benefits and limitations of technology.
Digital Life
Archived
Article Research

Clever cryptography could protect privacy in Covid-19 contact-tracing apps

Researchers are racing to achieve the benefits of location-tracking without the surveillance.
Article Research

WATCH: Can my phone tell if I’ve been near someone with COVID-19?

To help explain how this works is Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at MIT’s Media Lab.
Article Research

Local governments warm to MIT coronavirus-tracking app

The app is designed to let people discover if they've crossed paths with someone who's been infected with COVID-19.
Article Research

Safe Paths: A privacy-first approach to contact tracing

A multinational team develops new tools to slow the spread of pandemics.
Article Research

Bluetooth signals from your smartphone could automate Covid-19 contact tracing while preserving privacy

A system that enables smartphones to transmit “chirps” to nearby devices could notify people if they have been near an infected person.
Project Research

AI + Data Privacy Activities for K-9 Students

Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers are grappling with some herculean questions regarding kids' safety online. Homemade slime…
Post Research

Cybersecurity Badge Day 2020: Girl Scouts of Eastern MA focuses on data privacy and tech policy

The Personal Robots team collaborated with the Girl Scouts and the EMK Institute for the US Senate to teach 60 students about data privacy.
Article Research

A new app would say if you’ve crossed paths with someone who is infected

Private Kit: Safe Paths shares information about your movements in a privacy-preserving way—and could let health officials tackle COVID-19.
Article Research

Phones could track the spread of Covid-19. Is it a good idea?

China, South Korea used smartphone apps to monitor people with the disease. Americans have different views of privacy and data collection.
Article Research

5 questions on data and accountability with Julia Angwin

Read an interview with Angwin and Catherine D'Ignazio on machine bias, data privacy, and the role of journalism in creating accountability.
Article Research

How tiny startup teams handle big privacy issues

Four social-impact startups reveal how they manage privacy laws and concerns—even if they’re not required to.
Article Research

Ring’s hidden data let us map Amazon's sprawling home surveillance network

By Dell Cameron and Dhruv MehrotraAs reporters raced this summer to bring new details of Ring’s law enforcement contracts to…
Article Research

Opinion | The fast-evolving ethical conundrums of biotechnology

Our capacity to re-engineer the biological world raises questions that need answers before it gets too late
Article Research

When politicians play web designers

Opinion: The push to ban unwanted “dark patterns” from apps and sites may also take away certain features users want.
Archived
Research
CE 2.0

CE 2.0