The spectrum crisis will be a focal point for a new interdisciplinary center at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), which is dedicated to developing the next generation of wireless networks and mobile devices. Known as Wireless@MIT, the center will involve more than 50 MIT faculty members, research staff and graduate students across different labs and academic departments. The center will work with seven founding industry affiliates, including Amazon, Cisco, Intel, MediaTek, Microsoft Research, STMicroelectronics and Telefonica. In addition to pursuing new techniques for overcoming the exhaustion of radio spectrum due to growing data traffic, Wireless@MIT will seek ways to reduce power consumption and extend battery lifetimes on mobile devices as well as invent new applications that accommodate mobility and network variability. "The video conference application on your smartphone could do a much better job if it knew something about the underlying radio network and adapted to it," said Professor Hari Balakrishnan, co-director of the center. One large-scale effort in the planning stages is a prototype wireless network being developed for the MIT campus. For more on Wireless@MIT, see this release.