Prof. Mindell’s current work as a historian and engineer focuses on the interplay between automation and human oversight in the control of spacecraft, aircraft, and underwater vehicles; other research interests include the history of automation in the military, the history of electronics and computing, theories of engineering systems, deep ocean robotic archaeology, and the history of space exploration. He is the author of War, Technology and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor (2000), Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics (2002), and Digital Apollo: Human and Machine Spaceflight (2011). Mindell is founder and director of MIT's "DeepArch" research group in technology, archaeology, and the deep sea, and was co-leader of a 10-year collaborative project with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Greek Ministry of Culture to explore the deep Aegean sea for ancient and bronze-age shipwrecks using autonomous underwater vehicles.

Mindell received his B.S. in electrical engineering and his B.A. in literature from Yale University in 1988, and his Ph.D. in history of technology from MIT in 1996. Before coming to MIT he worked as a staff engineer in the Deep Submergence Laboratory of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he remains a visiting investigator. At MIT, he teaches courses that combine engineering and the history of technology, including a doctoral seminar in engineering systems. He also teaches "Engineering Apollo: The Moon Project as a Complex System," which integrates technical, political, and operational perspectives on the history of space exploration.