MIT-Amazon Science Hub

Bridging together industry and academia, the Science Hub helps create and support innovative research in the fields of AI, robotics, computing, and engineering.

Page Contents: About | Research | Who’s Involved | Funded Projects | Fellows | Events | Connect

About

The Science Hub is a collaboration launched by MIT and Amazon in October 2021. Hosted by the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, the MIT-Amazon Science Hub is designed to connect researchers across disciplines, generate new computing and artificial intelligence tools and technologies, and build an inclusive community to ensure that the benefits of our research are widely shared.

Key Research Fields

AI & Robotics at the Science Hub is a team of MIT and Amazon researchers working together at the intersection of autonomous mobile robots, optimization, control, and perception. Relevant challenges in AI and robotics include simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and applying recent deep learning advances to applications in robotics. The intersectional approach of the AI & Robotics team results in technology that brings state-of-the-art robotics to homes around the world.

Conversational AI at the Science Hub is a team of MIT and Amazon researchers working together on advances in natural language processing. Relevant research areas include commonsense reasoning, natural language understanding, and AI democratization. By working together to advance research in these areas, the research teams create intuitive voice experiences that enable people to naturally communicate with computers.

Databases & Distributed Systems at the Science Hub are teams using innovative approaches to designing, building, or operating large-scale database services or distributed cloud services.

Video Understanding at the Science Hub is teams of MIT and Amazon researchers working together to solve audio and video challenges with machine learning. The teams work on solving broad challenges like the automation of error detection in video streaming and the creation of adaptive machine learning algorithms for streaming. By solving these challenges, researchers ensure that people can enjoy seamless video content.

MIT-Amazon Call for Abstracts

We are currently accepting abstracts for 2025.

2025 call for abstract details

Who’s Involved

Joint Advisory Committee

Asu Ozdaglar

Chair, Deputy Dean of Academics, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing; Department Head, EECS; MathWorks Professor

Sertac Karaman

Faculty Director, Director, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems; ‍Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Antonio Torralba

Head of the Faculty of AI and Decision-making; Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor, EECS

Cynthia Barnhart

MIT Provost, Ford Foundation Professor and Professor of Operations Research, MIT Sloan

Tye Brady

Chief Technologist at Amazon Robotics

Jeremy Wyatt

Director of Applied Science at Robotics AI

Shiv Vitaladevuni

Director of Applied Science at Alexa AI

BA Winston

Vice President of Technology at Amazon Prime Video

Program Team

Aleksa Lukovic

Program Manager, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Helena Martins

Program Manager, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Kathleen Hatch Allen

Program Manager, Amazon

Funded Projects

The MIT-Amazon Science Hub supports a range of pioneering research initiatives that drive technological innovation and scientific discovery. Through collaborative funding, the hub enables interdisciplinary teams at MIT to explore breakthrough ideas in computing, artificial intelligence, and beyond.

Highlighted Projects:

Dynamic Manipulation (2021-2025)

  • PIs: Russ Tedrake (Toyota Professor of EECS, AeroAstro, MechE); Philip Isola (Associate Professor, EECS)
  • Researchers: Glen Chou, Max Simchowitz, Ge Yang, Ran Choi, Savva Morozov, Bernhard Paus-Graesdal, Shao Yuan Chew Chia, Tommy Cohn, Lujie Yang, Adam Wei, Nicholas Pfaff, Shruti Garg, Evelyn Fu, William Shen, Alan Yu, Yajvan Varan, Ishaan Preetam-Chandratreya

Foundation Behavioral Model for Robotic Manipulation With Heterogeneous Robot Learning (2024-2025)

  • PI: Edward Adelson (John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Vision Science, BCS)

Next Generation Spacial AI for Human-Centric Robotics (2022-2025)

  • PI: Luca Carlone (Boeing Career Development Associate Professor, AeroAstro)
  • Researchers: Lukas Schmid, Marcus Abate

Work of the Future Initiative Automation Clinic Research and Case Studies

  • PI: Julie Shah (Department Head, AeroAstro)
  • Researchers: Ben Armstrong, Valerie Chen, Matthew Boyd, Alex Cuellar

Ongoing Projects

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Completed Projects

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Related News

Amazon Fellows

Alexa Fellows (2022)

  • Greta Tuckute PhD ’22
  • Ekin Akyürek PhD ’22
  • Mycal Tucker PhD ’22

Robotics Fellows (2022-2023)

  • Anastasia K. Ostrowski PhD ’22
  • Aparna Balagopalan PhD ’22
  • Yue Meng PhD ’23
  • Siriu Li PhD ’23

Related News

Events

The Science Hub regularly hosts research talks, networking opportunities, and annual symposia. Upcoming events will be posted on a rolling basis. Past events are available to view here.

Connect With the MIT-Amazon Science Hub

The Science Hub supports activities that helps bring together students, researchers, and faculty from across MIT and the world, to connect and learn about AI and computing technologies.
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