About the Lab

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) has been responsible for some of the most significant technological achievements of the past few decades. Much of the hardware and software driving the Information Revolution has been, and continues to be, created at LCS. Anyone who makes decisions using a spreadsheet, sends and receives email, communicates with colleagues through a LAN, or surfs the Web is benefiting from the creative output of a present or former member of LCS.

LCS members and alumni have been instrumental in the development of the ARPANet, the Internet, the Ethernet, the World Wide Web, time-shared computers, spreadsheets, RSA encryption, and dozens of other technologies. In addition, LCS research has spawned over three dozen companies, including 3Com Corporation, Cirrus Logic, Inc., Lotus Development Corporation, Open Market, Inc., and RSA Data Security, Inc. The Laboratory currently runs the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets the standards for the World Wide Web.

LCS is an interdepartmental laboratory, bringing together faculty, researchers, and students in a broad program of study, research and experimentation. The Laboratory's principal goal is to pursue innovations in information technology that will yield long-term improvements in the ways that people live and work. LCS strives for excellence, relevance, and social purpose. The hallmark of its research is a balanced consideration of technological capability and human utility.

Currently, LCS is focusing its research on the architectures of tomorrow's information infrastructures. In the interest of making computers more efficient and easier to use, LCS researchers are putting great effort into human-machine communication via speech understanding; designing new computers, operating systems, and communications architectures for a networked world; automating information gathering and organization; and exploring the theoretical underpinnings of computer science.

LCS celebrated its 35th anniversary in April, 1999, and remains committed to leading the computer revolution, expanding the boundaries of today's information technology and forecasting and redefining the capabilities of the computer. 

History

The Laboratory for Computer Science was founded in 1963 as an inter-departmental research laboratory of MIT, with funds from the U.S. Defense Department, spurred on by the surprise launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik. Originally known as Project MAC (Machine-Aided Cognition), its original mission was to develop a computer system accessible to a large number of people, and to exploit the computer as an aid to research and education. Most of our research is visible in a historical timeline of our work put together for our recent 35th anniversary. The events of the 35th anniversary celebration may be examined in the archival LCS35 web site. A time capsule of LCS research innovations was also created at that event.

The initial result of this effort was time-shared computers and the operating system known as MULTICS, which was later developed by LCS partner Bell Labs into UNIX. MULTICS laid the foundation for many of today's basic design concepts for software systems, such as line and page editors, the directory system of organizing computer files, virtual memory, and computer-aided design. This first decade of LCS research also saw the development of the original TCP/IP networking protocol, as well as the fundamental technology that has become the Internet.

Additional LCS-pioneered concepts ultimately achieved widespread acceptance and commercial success. LCS research has played a key role in the development of the first commercial spreadsheet program, VisiCalc; X-Windows, a widely-adopted user interface system; the RSA encryption algorithm for secure computer transactions; and various commercial spoken language systems.

Building on these advances in computing, LCS has expanded its research by initiating studies in clinical decision making, public cryptography, distributed systems and languages, parallel processing systems, and human-computer speech understanding. This work has led to public-key encryption algorithms, object-oriented programming, computer languages and architectures for parallel systems, the development of local area networks, and the creation of standalone workstations.

In 1994, LCS became home to the World Wide Web Consortium, which develops the common protocols that promote the Web's evolution and ensure its interoperability.

Over 4000 researchers and students have contributed to the work of the Lab in its 35-year history. Some landmark inventions of present or former lab members include:

• MULTICS/Compatible Time-Sharing System - Fernando J. Corbató
• Logo Language - Hal Ableson and Seymour Papert
• Spreadsheets - Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston
• Ethernet - Bob Metcalfe
• TCP/IP Internet Protocols - David Clark
• RSA Public Cryptography - Ron Rivest
• X-Window System - Bob Scheifler and Jim Gettys
• NuBus and First Workstation Unix Ports - Steve Ward
• Information Marketplace - Michael Dertouzos
• Internet Transition from Mainframes to LANs - David Clark
• Dataflow Theory and Systems - Arvind and Jack Dennis
• Data Abstractions - Barbara Liskov
• Object Oriented Programming - Barbara Liskov
• Galaxy and Jupiter speech understanding systems - Victor Zue
• Scheme Language - Hal Abelson and Gerald Sussman
• Theory of Virus Shell Assembly - Bonnie Berger
• World Wide Web - Tim Berners-Lee

Organization

The work of LCS is organized by  the Director, Michael Dertouzos,  and the Asscociate Directors, Anant Agarwal and Victor Zue. Most members of LCS are affiliated exclusively with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) or the Department of Mathematics at MIT. There are 65 faculty and senior research staff members. In addition, about 50 visiting faculty members, postdoctoral students, and research affiliates work at the Lab. One hundred eighty graduate students and 100 undergraduates, working under MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, also are intimately involved in LCS advanced research projects.

Michael Dertouzos :
Michael Dertouzos is Director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Born in Athens, Greece, Professor Dertouzos received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1964, and has headed up the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science since 1974. In 1980, he first wrote about the Information Marketplace -- now the central theme of the Laboratory and a model of the information world toward which we are headed. He has written extensively on this subject, culminating in the recent best-selling book WHAT WILL BE: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives, published by HarperCollins Publishers in 1998. Dertouzos advises the U.S. and E.U. governments, and was a U.S. delegate to the 1995 G7 Conference and co-chairman of the 1998 World Economic Forum. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering, the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and the Athens Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds the best paper award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the best educator award of the American Society of Engineering Education, and the Commander of Merit Decoration of the Hellenic Republic.

Anant Agarwal:
Anant Agarwal is Associate Director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. He is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where his teaching and research interests include VLSI, computer architecture and compilation, and software systems. He currently leads the Raw project at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Agarwal led a group that developed the MIT Alewife, a scalable shared-memory multiprocessor. He also led the VirtualWires project at MIT, and was a founder of Virtual Machine Works, Inc., which took the VirtualWires logic emulation technology to market. He is a co-founder of InCert Software Corporation, which is applying software agent technology to enterprise applications management. Agarwal holds a Ph.D. (1987) and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He received his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1982.

Victor Zue:
Victor Zue is Associate Director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, head of its Spoken Language Systems Group, and a Senior Research Scientist at MIT. Zue's main research interest is in the development of spoken language interfaces to facilitate graceful human/computer interactions, and he has taught many courses and extensively on this subject. Recently, his group pioneered the development of systems that enable a user to interact with computers using multiple spoken languages. His work has been covered by several publications internationally including Time magazine and the Economist, and a recent Business Week article described him as one of five "trailblazers" in speech interfaces worldwide. In 1994, Zue was elected Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Signal Processing Society. From 1996-1998, he chaired the Information Science and Technology (ISAT) study group for the DARPA-DoD. Zue is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He received his Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1976.