Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The faculty, students, and staff of MIT’s electrical engineering and computer science department have helped develop the technologies and infrastructure of the information age, ranging from the Internet and search engines to cell phones, high-definition television, and optical tomography. Current research reflects our ongoing leadership and innovation and promises to continue transforming the way people live, work, and play.
The department is divided into five primary research areas, most of which have a long history and well-established culture. At the same time, the boundaries between these areas are porous, encouraging collaboration among faculty, students, and staff across the department. The five research areas are:

• Systems, communication, control and signal processing

  Solving problems in communication and coding, systems theory and control, optimization, statistical inference and decision theory, signal processing, and large-scale social, power, and communication networks.
  

• Computer science

  Tackling subjects including mathematical foundations of computation, cryptography, artificial intelligence, robotics, vision, machine learning, molecular biology, database systems, networks, computer architecture, and operating systems.
  

• Electronics, computers and systems

  Exploring topics ranging from device-level circuit design and computer-aided design to signal processing techniques involving electromagnetic or mechanical waves.
  

• Engineering physics

  Solving engineering problems in energy and power, electromagnetic systems, photonics and optics, superconductivity, solid state devices, electronic materials, microsystems and nanotechnology.
  

• Bioelectrical engineering

  Engineering solutions for living systems, including biomedical electronics, speech synthesis and recognition, and the electromechanical properties of biological cells.