Media Lab Europe describes itself as a "university-level research and education centre located in Dublin".

This is the first time that the prestigious MIT Media Lab has collaborated to establish an independent centre reproducing its "atelier-style and pre-competitive research culture from its Cambridge, Massachusetts home base". MLE and MIT Media Lab will share intellectual property for the first 10 years.

Researchers are encouraged to take risks. "Science informs us as to what is possible. Art informs us about what is imaginable." Initially intended to be self-supporting, MLE's main sponsor is the Government. Its corporate research partners are AIB, BBC, Eircom, Ericsson, Essilor and Fondazione Ugo Bordoni. MIT Media Lab has about 180 corporate research partners.

Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of MIT Media Lab, and chairman of MLE's board of directors, said on a visit to Dublin last October that, with the current technology downturn, MLE would have to count on only about 50 per cent of its operating revenue coming from corporate sponsorships. About 90 per cent of the MIT Media Lab's funding comes from corporate sponsors.

Research in MLE includes everyday learning, mind games, human connectedness, dynamic interactions, human well-being tools, palpable machines, adaptive speech interfaces, story networks and future music.