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.
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“This summertime must be forgot
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—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
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—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
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—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
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—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
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—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)