The MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems is an interdisciplinary research laboratory of MIT, working on research in the areas of communications, control, and signal processing combining faculty from the School of Engineering, the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Department of Mathematics and the MIT Sloan School of Management. The lab is located in the Dreyfoos Tower of the Stata Center and shares some research duties with MITs Lincoln Lab and the independent Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. The current acting director is Prof. Alan S. Willsky.
The Laboratory traces its beginnings to the MIT Servomechanics Laboratory, where much work on guidance systems and early computation was done during World War II.
Affectionately called LIDS, the laboratory has hosted several luminaries over the years, such as Claude Shannon and David Forney.
Famous quotes containing the words mit, laboratory, information, decision and/or systems:
“This summertime must be forgot
MIt will be, if we would or not....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)
“Rejecting all organs of information ... but my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Once the decision has been reached, close your ears even to the best counter-argument: a sign of strong character. Thus an occasional will to stupidity.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“What is most original in a man’s nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn’t have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)