About CSAIL

 

Student Spotlights

How to join CSAIL:

CSAIL is a cross disciplinary laboratory where graduate students from many academic departments carry out their research. In order to join CSAIL as a graduate student, you need to first apply and be admitted to an academic department.

Students are admitted to an academic department and satisfy their degree requirements there but sit in an office and carry out their research in a laboratory such as CSAIL. Our students are diverse both in their backgrounds and their interests. As of October 2006 we have 420 graduate students at CSAIL of whom 90 are women. We are committed to encouraging women from across the US and the world to apply to graduate school at MIT so we can redress the obvious imbalance.

Each academic department has directions on how to apply on their department web site. All admits to Area II (Computer Science) in the EECS Department are automatically offered funding and a place in CSAIL. However, we have students from many other departments who join CSAIL by finding faculty members in CSAIL to advise and sponsor them after the student has been admitted to their department.

You can find a listing of our faculty on the PI biographies page. Before approaching a faculty member to ask them to be your advisor and sponsor, it is advisable to read up on their work and to find out whether their interests and yours coincide. Then send them email, explaining to which department you have already been admitted (not just applied) and your area of interest. Request an appointment to see them.

You can find out more about the research being done at CSAIL by looking at our research abstracts and recent publications on our publications site.

Academic departments with graduate student members of CSAIL:

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)

The Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology

Department of Mathematics

Mechanical Engineering

Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics