MIT Lincoln Laboratory-Lexington, Massachusetts Project Center - MQP

Current Director(s)
Active Program Term(s)
A-Term during early fall
Project Opportunities
Major Qualifying Project (MQP)

MIT Lincoln Laboratory was founded in 1951 as a federally funded research and development center for MIT. Lincoln Laboratory’s fundamental mission is to apply science and advanced technology to critical problems of national security. The scope of these problems includes air defense, communications, space surveillance, missile defense, tactical surveillance systems, and air traffic control.

Projects at Lincoln Laboratory focus on a variety of areas and project teams are often interdisciplinary. Teams work with a mentor from Lincoln Laboratory as well as one or more WPI faculty advisors.



Starting about two weeks prior to the beginning of A-Term, students work on their MQPs at Lincoln Laboratory full-time (five days a week) for approximately nine weeks. The first two weeks, arranged immediately prior to the start of A-Term, serve as a PQP period.



Many students selected for this program also seek summer employment at Lincoln Laboratory for the summer preceding the project.

Students accepted into the program must be United States citizens; if you have a dual-citizenship with another country, you must contact the program director to confirm eligibility.

Potential projects include:

  • Developing a platform that can analyze data from wearable devices (like FitBits), which includes software development and big data processing
  • A project in the area of ballistic missile defense dealing with potentially radar and other sensor processing systems
  • Projects with the Lincoln Super Computing Center (usually deal with Machine Learning, AI, big data processing)