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Research at MIT

Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS)

Vincent W.S. Chan, Lauren Clark, and Robert G. Gallager

The Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) is an interdepartmental laboratory within MIT's School of Engineering dedicated to advancing the fields of systems, communication, signal processing, and control. It is staffed by faculty, researchers, and graduate students primarily from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Sloan School of Management.

 

History

LIDS is an outgrowth of the Servomechanisms Laboratory, founded in 1940 by Gordon S. Brown. The "Servo Lab" made major contributions to victory in World War II by developing servomechanisms for military gun-control systems. The work on gun control helped lay the foundations for feedback control, as exemplified in the 1948 textbook Principles of Servomechanisms, by Brown and Donald Campbell. These principles were central to postwar developments in areas as diverse as the numerical control of machine tools, chemical process control, and the design of computers.

The Servo Lab's early work also made pioneering contributions to guided missile control, radar, and flight trainer technology. Work broadened in the following decades, leading to major advancements in several areas: digital computation, information transfer and processing, communication theory, data networks, automatic control of air- and spacecraft, air defense systems, computer-aided design, and economic systems.

In 1959, the Lab changed its name to the Electronic Systems Laboratory (ESL) to reflect its broader focus on systems. In 1978, ESL and the Communication and Information Theory group from the Research Laboratory of Electronics joined to form LIDS. These changes show how far the current laboratory's mission has evolved beyond its narrow, WWII origins and reflect the shift of focus over the years from applications to basic research.

 

The LIDS Approach

LIDS emphasizes basic knowledge as the foundation for innovation. Students come to the Lab for its offering of a blend of technology and basic science underlying technology. Recognizing that it is usually more difficult to ask the right question than to answer it, LIDS encourages and helps students to define their own research problems.

The intellectual culture at LIDS encourages students, postdocs, and faculty both to develop the conceptual structures of the Lab's system areas and apply these structures to important engineering problems. This is done in a cooperative atmosphere of sharing ideas and questions. This culture is particularly evident each January at the LIDS Student Colloquium, a two-day event at which students present work in a variety of areas.

In the words of one LIDS alumnus: "The approach in LIDS is to understand the core of any problem, and to develop tools and ideas necessary in achieving this understanding. The abilities and perspectives developed through the LIDS experience transcend any specific application, and as such are of lasting value and transportable to different fields. The accomplishments of the Lab's alumni in industry and academia in a broad range of fields are evidence of the value of its approach."

 

People

LIDS is home to 130 graduate students and post-doctoral associates from around the world. Research opportunities are also available to undergraduate students. The doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows supported by the Laboratory over the past 60 years represent a who's who of industry and academia in the fields of systems, control, communication, and signal processing.

The faculty at LIDS are recognized leaders in the fields of networks and communication, digital signal processing, optimization, and control. They have authored many widely-used textbooks that impact education worldwide. In addition, both faculty and research staff have written well-known research articles and have won major awards.

In the past two years alone, LIDS professors and researchers have received the Eduard Rhein Foundation's Basic Research Award – Europe's biggest such award (Professor Robert Gallager); the International Telecommunications Innovation Award (Professor Moe Win); the Telecommunications Award from the Massachusetts Telecom Council (Professor Vincent W.S. Chan); and numerous best-paper awards, including the Leon K. Kirchmayer Prize Paper Award, presented by the IEEE Board of Directors for the most outstanding paper by an author under 30 ( Professor Muriel Medard). In addition, Professor Chan was named Fellow of the Optical Society of America; Professor David Forney was inducted into the Massachusetts Telecom Hall of Fame; and Professor Dimitri Bertsekas received the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) John R. Raggazzini Education Award and was elected into the National Academy of Engineering.

 

Research

Research at LIDS has a wide range of applications in the communication, computer, control, electronics, and aerospace industries. It falls into four main areas:

 

Looking Forward

In late 2003, LIDS will take up residence in the newly completed Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences. LIDS and the Stata Center's other occupants – the Laboratory for Computer Science, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy – will comprise a new academic village that will carry into the twenty-first century the pioneering spirit of Building 20. The "magical incubator," as Building 20 is sometimes called, occupied the Stata Center site for 55 years and was the breeding ground for many of the great ideas that were born at MIT.

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