Since 2012 she has served as Director of MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), which – with more than 125 faculty and 1700+ members – is the university's largest interdepartmental research lab.
As head of CSAIL's Distributed Robotics Lab, Rus focuses her research on the science and engineering of autonomy, with the goal of developing systems that seamlessly integrate into people's lives to support them with cognitive and physical tasks.
[6] Rus has published an extensive collection of research articles that span the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and computational design.
[12] Rus has contributed some of the first multi-robot system algorithms with performance guarantees in distributed robotics, by introducing a control-theoretic optimization approach for adaptive decentralized coordination.
[18] Her work has introduced self-contained autonomous robotic systems such as an underwater "fish" used for ocean exploration[19] and dexterous hands that can grasp a range of different objects.
[24] Rus and her team are trying to address some of the key challenges with today's methods for machine learning, including data quality and bias, explainability, generalizability, and sustainability.
Rus' research has also involved developing machine learning systems for a range of use cases and industries, including for autonomous technologies for vehicles on land, in the air and at sea.
They have collaborated with the Andrea Bocelli Foundation to create wearable systems[33] to help guide the visually impaired, as well as a "smart glove" that uses machine learning to interpret sign language.
[34] In recent years Rus has worked with MIT colleague Wojciech Matusik to create methods for 3D-printing robots and other functional objects, often made out of multiple different types of material.
She has 3D-printed soft robots with embedded electronics,[35] items with tunable mechanical properties,[36] and even "smart gloves" that could help with grasping tasks for people with motor-coordination issues.
A select list of her awards include: Rus and CSAIL have been criticized for their ties to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which have been accused of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.