The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is the nation's premier science, engineering, and technology institution. MIT -- a privately endowed research university -- is dedicated to advancing knowledge and educating students in science, engineering, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century and beyond. At MIT, a great deal of research and teaching takes place in interdisciplinary programs, laboratories, and centers whose work extends beyond traditional departmental boundaries.

MIT's cluster from Aspen Systems has a dual Xeon 2.4 GHz processor with high-speed Myrinet interconnects and is being used to process and interpret environmental data by taking advantage of the dramatic increase in available data from airborne and orbital remote sensing platforms. MIT researchers are developing intelligent environmental data assimilation procedures that are able to efficiently extract useful information about the earth from a diverse set of data sources.