Funding Model
The Lab’s primary source of funding comes from corporate sponsorship. The Media Lab is unique in that it is almost 100% industrially funded. Rather than accepting funding on a per-project or per-group basis, the Media Lab asks sponsors to fund general themes of the Lab; sponsor companies can then connect with Media Lab research in a way that is more spontaneous, but at the same time companies are guided by structured relationships with specific members of the Lab's faculty and research staff, who assist the sponsor companies in deriving the greatest benefit possible from their sponsorship of the Media Lab. The Media Lab is also exploring new methods for making a connection between sponsor businesses and Lab research.
In addition, specific projects and researchers are funded more traditionally through government institutions including the NIH, NSF, and DARPA. Also, consortia with other schools or other departments at MIT are often able to have money that does not enter into the common pool.
Read more about this topic: MIT Media Lab
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