Fadel Adib Promoted to Full Professor

Congratulations to Media Arts and Sciences Professor, Joint appointment in EECS, [CS] Fadel Adib, who has been promoted to full Professor, effective July 1, 2026. Since receiving tenure in 2022, Professor Adib and his Signal Kinetics group have continued to push wireless sensing into new territory, developing augmented reality systems that locate hidden objects using wireless signals, low-power RF navigation systems for autonomous indoor drones, and most recently integrating generative AI with wireless vision to enable robots to detect objects blocked entirely from view.

“Fadel’s promotion to Full Professor reflects the extraordinary trajectory and rapid flourishing of his research as well as his impact on students, colleagues, and the wider world,” said Tod Machover, Faculty Director of the MIT Media Lab. “He has built significantly-scaled sensing and analysis technologies that have moved from the lab into widespread adoption and recognition, and his contributions to our community – as mentor, collaborator, and thought leader – have been as exemplary as his scholarship.”

His spinoff Cartesian Systems is now deployed in more than 700 stores across 55 countries, mapping physical environments in real time using wireless signals. Professor Adib was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2024 and received the Great Arab Minds Award in Engineering and Technology in 2023.

“The Media Lab and MAS have long been pioneers in sensing, and with modern AI leveraging ever more distributed sensor data, this field is poised for yet more revolution,” notes Joe Paradiso, Academic Head of the MAS Program. “Fadel is at the vanguard here. His research crucially elevates our strong legacy in sensing technologies and adopting AI in how people connect with this information.”