Inside MIT's bonkers, $60 million-per-year laboratory for geniuses

Founded in 1985, the MIT Media Lab is one of the strangest and most exciting academic institutions in the world.

Housed across two buildings on the prestigious university's Cambridge, Massachusetts campus, the laboratory works to bring together researchers and students across disciplines to build novel tools.

On September 20, I had the opportunity to tour the lab and speak with a number of the researchers. Here's a peek inside inside what might be one of the most innovative places on the planet, where the future seems to be very much in the present.

Much of the Media Lab looks like the inside of an extremely fancy college dorm, or perhaps an overfunded Silicon Valley startup. The group's annual budget is about $60 million, before outside grants get factored in. The biggest physical difference from a normal academic building? Researchers share working spaces across disciplines, and most rooms have only glass walls.

The Biomechatronics group works on artificial limbs. These are 3D-printed sockets, custom-designed to comfortably fit the limbs of individual users.

Here's the machine used to plan the sockets.