MIT Media Lab

MIT Media Lab develops technologies and research at the intersection of computing, art, science, and design, spanning AI, sensing, education, and human creativity. Its corporate membership program gives organizations access to exploratory research and opportunities to bring business problems to researchers. Its contributions include Scratch, a programming language and online community developed by its Lifelong Kindergarten group, where young people create and share stories, games, and animations. Scratch launched in 2007; its team moved to the separate nonprofit Scratch Foundation in 2019.

Founded by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner, the lab opened in 1985. Its current leadership includes executive director Jessica Rosenworcel and faculty director Tod Machover. A lasting research contribution is affective computing: Rosalind W. Picard’s work helped establish a field concerned with sensing, recognizing, and responding to human emotional information. That research connects AI and human-computer interaction with wearable sensing and health applications.

The lab’s 2025 Impact Report describes more than 25 research groups, centers, initiatives, and programs collectively. Corporate membership supports its research model, including investigations too costly or exploratory for members to undertake internally. Its educational influence extends beyond the institution: in a 2022 retrospective, Scratch creator Mitchel Resnick reported that more than 30 million people worldwide programmed and shared stories, games, and animations with Scratch during 2021.