Media Arts & Sciences

About Media Arts & Sciences

The Program in Media Arts & Sciences at the MIT Media Lab

The Media Lab is a community of designers, researchers, and inventors who work together as members of research teams, doing things that conventional wisdom says can’t or shouldn't be done. The approximately 400 projects underway at the Lab are as varied as the students who conduct them: from tools for learning and expression, to innovative devices for human adaptation and augmentation, to new modes of transportation for tomorrow's smart cities.

Students come to the Media Lab through the Program in Media Arts and Sciences (MAS), based within MIT’s School of Architecture + Planning. Each year, the program accepts approximately 50 master’s and PhD candidates with backgrounds ranging from computer science to psychology, architecture to neuroscience, mechanical engineering to material science, and more.

MAS offers approximately 30 graduate courses and several undergraduate subjects. Media Lab courses explore several themes, including, for example, human-computer interaction, communications, learning, design, and entrepreneurship.

MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, an interdisciplinary initiative investigating the interface between computer science and physical science, also admits students through the Program in Media Arts and Sciences. The Center is known for its global network of digital fabrication facilities.

Image copyright Andy Ryan