Advanced Technology

R&D in advanced technology focuses on inventing new materials, devices, and components to enable revolutionary system capabilities. We pursue innovation in a wide set of areas, including imagers, lasers, quantum computing, microsystems, RF technology, and chemical sensors.

Advanced Imager Technology
Advanced Materials and Microsystems
Laser Technology and Applications
Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems
RF Technology

Our group has pioneered imaging technologies that have enabled some of the world's most powerful telescopes and cameras for the defense and scientific communities. These technologies include charge-coupled-device (CCD) imagers for astronomical instruments, single-photon-sensitive imagers for foliage-penetrating ladar systems, and digital-pixel focal plane arrays for wide-area infrared cameras.

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When NASA made history in 2013 with the longest laser communication link ever demonstrated (from a Moon-orbiting satellite to Earth), our group was behind the satellite's laser transmitter and the ground terminals' highly sensitive photon detectors that enabled the link. We have a long history of developing advanced solid-state, fiber, and diode laser technologies for the scientific and defense communities.

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A women stands in front of a fabric weaver

Lincoln Laboratory researchers develop a fabric that can sense chemical vapors

Oct 18

An illustration of electronic oscillator on a chip

Nature can help solve optimization problems

Oct 11

Awards

Longtime MIT Lincoln Laboratory researcher wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Oct 9

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Researchers test the prototype standoff microwave imaging system. The antennas emit radio signals that reflect off the person standing in front of the array; the system processes the reflections to create the image on the monitors in the background.

advanced imaging

Video-Rate Standoff Microwave Imaging System

The system can rapidly and discreetly detect threat items concealed under clothes or hidden in bags of people in crowded public spaces.

TESS's cameras, which will monitor planets passing in front of stars, were designed and built by Lincoln Laboratory engineers. Illustration: Chester Beals

space

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

A new planet hunter will spend the next two years searching for exoplanets, including those that could support life.

bioengineering

EnteroPhone™

A wireless, ingestible device monitors heart and breathing rates by listening to the body's sounds and senses core temperature, all from within the gastrointestinal tract.

The LASSOS display screen highlights the laser strike event in live sensor imagery on the left and generates a 3D model of the laser streak in Google Earth, right.

sensors

Laser Aircraft Strike Suppression Optical System

A system that detects laser beams being shone into the sky and alerts police of their source can help protect pilots and aircraft.

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I always describe what I do as a game of 3D Tetris, but all of the tetrominoes have electrical characteristics and the win conditions invariably change a few times during play.