Media Lab Europe

Media Lab Europe (MLE) was a research institute in Dublin, Ireland based on the MIT Media Lab. It went into voluntary liquidation early in 2005.

Creation

MLE was created in July 2000 and was initiated by the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. The lab received start-up funding of 35 million Euro from Irish Government, as well as sponsorship from industrial research partners (see below). It was located in a former Guinness warehouse in the historic Liberties area and was to have been a flagship project for the Irish Government's Digital Hub project, an urban renewal scheme aiming to encourage digital media companies to locate in the area. The MLE board initially included celebrity Bono from U2: in 2002, he stepped down in favour of fellow band member The Edge whose technical interests better fit the laboratory's mission and who (unlike Bono) regularly attended meetings of the board.

Work

The lab focused on innovation in digital technology and human-machine interaction. MLE was quite successful and managed to recreate the creative play research atmosphere of the MIT Media Lab. By 2004 MLE was in full swing, and in the lab's short lifespan the researchers produced 21 refereed journal articles, 59 refereed full papers for conferences, and 62 refereed shorter papers for conferences, for a total of 142 refereed works. The Lab achieved international recognition for a range of its work including EEG based mind-computer interfaces; the BumpList and Iso-phone. The latter two projects received honorary mention at the 2004 Prix Ars Electronica. Furthermore, MLE researchers regularly contributed to international research forums of the European Commission, the Association for Computing Machinery, and others concerned with advancing technologies and their constructive uses.