Past Event

MIT Data Center Day

Bits, Brains, and Buildings: Designing the Next-Generation Data Center 

September 30, 2025
MIT Data Center Day
Forum

Location

MIT Industry Meeting Center (E90)
1 Main Street, 12th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02142


Forum Recordings:

Recordings will be available exclusively to ILP members. To learn more about becoming a member, click here.


Overview

MIT Data Center Day will be a high-energy, insight-rich forum focused on the real-world challenges of building next-generation compute infrastructure. MIT faculty and researchers will share practical strategies on topics ranging from AI workloads and energy integration to modular design and sustainability. The event will also feature dynamic lightning talks from MIT-connected startups at the forefront of innovation, along with ample opportunities to connect with peers, spark new ideas, and foster meaningful collaborations.


Registration Fee:
  ILP:
complimentary
  MIT: limited in-person seats available, complimentary
  General Public: $500 for in-person/ $250 for livestream


Cancellation Policy: You may cancel your registration for a full refund through September 23. Refunds will be issued to the original form of payment. From September 23 to September 30, partial refunds will be available, minus a service fee ($50 for in-person registrations and $25 for virtual). No refunds will be issued after September 30. To cancel, please email ocrevents@mit.edu.


Visiting MIT: https://www.mit.edu/visitmit/
Where to Stay: https://institute-events.mit.edu/visit/where-to-stay
Registration Questions: ocrevents@mit.edu

The agenda below is subject to change without prior notice.

  • Overview

    MIT Data Center Day will be a high-energy, insight-rich forum focused on the real-world challenges of building next-generation compute infrastructure. MIT faculty and researchers will share practical strategies on topics ranging from AI workloads and energy integration to modular design and sustainability. The event will also feature dynamic lightning talks from MIT-connected startups at the forefront of innovation, along with ample opportunities to connect with peers, spark new ideas, and foster meaningful collaborations.


    Registration Fee:
      ILP:
    complimentary
      MIT: limited in-person seats available, complimentary
      General Public: $500 for in-person/ $250 for livestream


    Cancellation Policy: You may cancel your registration for a full refund through September 23. Refunds will be issued to the original form of payment. From September 23 to September 30, partial refunds will be available, minus a service fee ($50 for in-person registrations and $25 for virtual). No refunds will be issued after September 30. To cancel, please email ocrevents@mit.edu.


    Visiting MIT: https://www.mit.edu/visitmit/
    Where to Stay: https://institute-events.mit.edu/visit/where-to-stay
    Registration Questions: ocrevents@mit.edu

    The agenda below is subject to change without prior notice.


Agenda

8:30 AM

Registration and Check-in
8:50 AM
Program Director, MIT Industrial Liaison Program
Jim Flynn
Jim Flynn
Program Director

Before MIT, Jim was the assistant dean of research business development at the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences. Jim founded, built, and sold multiple technology companies in fintech and online media. He has bootstrapped startups and closed venture capital, angel, and private equity funding rounds. Jim also served as the Chief Operating Officer of a public company and a subsidiary of Pitney Bowes. He began his career at AT&T as a software developer, hardware engineer, and national account manager. Jim has authored patents and wrote one of the first books on Java programming. Out of all the roles he's held, Jim's favorite job title by far is dedicated dad of four. He earned a BS from Manhattan College and an MBA with concentrations in finance and international business from New York University.

An introduction to the day’s themes, objectives, and structure. A representative from MIT Corporate Relations will highlight the relevance of data center innovation in the era of AI and global digitization.

9:00 AM

Leader of the FundamentalAI Group, MIT FutureTech

Jonathan Rosenfeld

Leader of the FundamentalAI Group, MIT FutureTech

Jonathan (“Jonny”) Rosenfeld leads the FundamentalAI group at MIT FutureTech — focusing on the fundamental safety and performance limits of deep learning and AGI, their attainment, and predictability.

Dr. Rosenfeld’s interests lie at the intersection of fundamental science and large-scale impact across Academia and Industry. In industry, he has directed large-scale research and development teams, including hundreds of engineers, across disciplines including AI, genomics, physics, and information theory; and currently leads efforts at the intersection of AI and stem cell biology as Co-Founder and CTO of somite.ai. In 2019, at MIT, he was among the pioneers of Deep Learning scaling laws, which have underpinned fundamental progress in the field (and hypothesized these to be exponentially suboptimal). His work twice received the Israeli Defense Prize, akin to the USA's Medal of Freedom.

He holds five degrees: a Ph.D. and MSc in CS from MIT; a BA in Physics, BSc in EE, and an MBA from the Technion.

The rapid rise of foundation models and real-time inference is transforming the scale and nature of compute demand, outpacing historical trends and stressing existing infrastructure. This session explores how the evolution of modern AI workloads is driving the need for new data center strategies, including decisions around compute scaling, energy use, system architecture, and geographic deployment. It will also examine how research and innovation at the intersection of AI and compute economics are shaping the future of infrastructure planning.

9:30 AM

Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Associate Director, Research Laboratory of Electronics
Professor, Department of Physics 
Laboratory Fellow Emeritus, Lincoln Laboratory
Director, Center for Quantum Engineering

Will Oliver

Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Associate Director, Research Laboratory of Electronics
Professor, Department of Physics 
Laboratory Fellow Emeritus, Lincoln Laboratory
Director, Center for Quantum Engineering

William D. Oliver is jointly appointed the Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as the Director of the Center for Quantum Engineering and as Associate Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. He is a Principal Investigator in the Engineering Quantum Systems Group at MIT campus. He provides programmatic and technical leadership targeting the development of quantum and classical high-performance computing technologies. Will’s research interests include the materials growth, fabrication, design, and measurement of superconducting qubits, as well as the development of cryogenic packaging and control electronics involving cryogenic CMOS and single-flux quantum digital logic.

From 2003-2023, Will also worked at Lincoln Laboratory — most recently as a Laboratory Fellow (2017-2023) — with the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group. Over those 20 years, Will was instrumental in growing the quantum group to its present levels. In February 2023, Will stepped down from this position, due to a perceived organizational conflict of interest with his outside professional activities. Nonetheless, he and the EQuS group maintain a strong collaborative relationship with the Laboratory.

Will is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He serves on the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, the US Committee for Superconducting Electronics, and is an IEEE Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC) Board Member.

Will received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and B.A. in Japanese from the University of Rochester (NY).

Quantum computing is moving rapidly from theoretical curiosity to an emerging tool with the potential to reshape entire industries. This session will introduce the core principles, terminology, and architectures of quantum systems, outline what they can and cannot do compared to classical computing, and explore where the field is headed. We’ll also touch on the potential implications for high‑performance computing environments and why forward‑looking organizations are tracking quantum’s progress now.

10:00 AM
Saurabh Amin

Saurabh Amin’s research focuses on the design and control of infrastructure systems through the use of game theory and network optimization. His group works in three main areas: (1) resilient network control, (2) information systems and incentive design, and (3) optimal resource allocation in large-scale infrastructure systems. By addressing critical questions in highway transportation, electric power distribution, and urban water networks, the group develops new theories and design tools to improve the performance of essential infrastructure systems in the face of both stochastic and adversarial disruptions.

The group’s research agenda centers on designing network monitoring and control algorithms, as well as economic incentive schemes, that enable infrastructure users and operators to make optimal decisions under uncertainty. This agenda is advanced through an approach that: (i) models cyber-physical interactions in infrastructures and evaluates their vulnerabilities; (ii) develops tools to detect and respond to both local and network-level failures; and (iii) designs incentive schemes that enhance aggregate levels of public good while accounting for dependencies and private information among strategic entities.

Data centers must be designed to operate reliably in the face of environmental shocks, resource constraints, and long-term system uncertainty. This session explores how scenario modeling and system-level foresight can inform infrastructure planning, balancing performance, sustainability, and adaptability in an evolving energy and policy landscape. We’ll examine how advanced modeling tools and data-driven strategies can help decision-makers anticipate and adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

10:30 AM

Coffee & Networking Break 
11:00 AM
Christoph Reinhart

Christoph Reinhart is a building scientist and architectural educator working in the field of sustainable building design and environmental modeling. At MIT, he is leading the Sustainable Design Lab (SDL), an inter-disciplinary group with a grounding in architecture that develops design workflows, planning tools, and metrics to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings and neighborhoods. He is also a managing member of Solemma, a technology company and Harvard University spinoff, and served as strategic development advisor and cofounder for MIT spinoff mapdwell until it joined Palmetto Clean Technology in 2021. Products originating from SDL and Solemma are used in practice and education in over 90 countries.

Before joining MIT in 2012, Christoph led the sustainable design concentration area at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where the student forum voted him the 2009 Teacher of the Year for the Department of Architecture. From 1997 to 2008, Christoph had worked as a staff scientist at the National Research Council of Canada and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany. He has authored over 160 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including two textbooks on daylighting and seven book chapters. His work has been supported by a variety of organizations, from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and the Governments of Canada, Germany, Kuwait, and Portugal to Autodesk, Exelon, Kalwall, Philips, Saint Gobain, Shell, and United Technology Corporation.

Christoph’s work has been recognized with various awards, among them a Fraunhofer Bessel Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2018), the IBPSA-USA Distinguished Achievement Award (2016), a Star of Building in Science award by Buildings4Change magazine (2013), and seven best paper awards. Mapdwell has been recognized with FastCompany’s Design by Innovation 2015 award for Data Visualization as well as a Sustainia 100 award. Christoph is a physicist by training and holds a doctorate in architecture from the Technical University of Karlsruhe.

Modular and climate-adaptive data centers can provide flexibility and resilience. We’ll explore how new design strategies and dynamic building envelopes can support evolving workloads.

11:30 AM

Senior Staff in Cyber Security and Resilient Systems Group, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Hamed Okhravi

Senior Staff in Cyber Security and Resilient Systems Group, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Dr. Hamed Okhravi is a senior staff member in the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group, where he leads programs and conducts research in the area of systems security. His research interests include cybersecurity, science of security, security evaluation, and operating systems. He is the recipient of the Stratus Award for Cloud Computing (2020), two R&D 100 Awards (2020 and 2018), MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Best Invention Award (2019), MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Team Award (2015), National Security Agency's 3rd Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition Award (2015), and MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Early Career Technical Achievement Award (2014) for his research.  

He is an associate editor of the IEEE Security & Privacy journal. He has also served twice as the program chair for the ACM Moving Target Defense (MTD) workshop, the poster chair of the IEEE SecDev Conference, and a guest editor of the IEEE Security & Privacy – Special Issue on Hacking without Humans. In addition, he has served on the steering committee of the ACM MTD workshop, and as a program committee member for many academic conferences and workshops including NDSS, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, RAID, AsiaCCS, IEEE DAC, IEEE SecDev, IEEE/ACM ICCAD, MILCOM, and ACNS, among others. He has also served on the National Science Foundation's Panel for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program.

Okhravi actively contributes to various national, Laboratory, and division-level strategic planning activities, and has led the development of multiple national-level R&D roadmaps. He has also led the development of multiple systems security technologies that have successfully transitioned outside and inside Lincoln Laboratory. His work has resulted in multiple U.S. patents and numerous publications in top-tier venues.

Okhravi’s current focus is researching and developing a Resilient Mission Computer, a new computer system design in which important security properties are inherent and multiple large classes of vulnerabilities are prevented by design.

Okhravi earned his MS and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006 and 2010, respectively.

As data centers grow more critical to new AI applications, finance, and industrial operations, they’ve become prime targets for cyber, physical, and supply chain threats. This session explores strategies to identify, prioritize, and mitigate risks across the infrastructure stack, from hardware and software to organizational workflows. Topics include zero-trust architecture, threat modeling, ransomware readiness, and systemic resilience. Drawing from real-world cases and research, we’ll examine how leaders can design secure systems that are also agile and scalable.

12:00 PM

Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center and Eni-MIT Alliance, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)

Morgan Andreae

Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center and Eni-MIT Alliance, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)

Morgan Andreae is the executive director of MITEI’s Future Energy Systems Center. Prior to joining MITEI, Andreae was the executive director of technology and innovation at Cummins where he led teams in the development of new battery, fuel cell, electrolyzer, and electric traction technologies. Over the course of his career Andreae has held a variety of roles in technology development, strategy, and product development, with a consistent focus on bringing more sustainable technology to market. Andreae holds over 25 patents on diesel, hybrid-electric, and electric powertrain technology. He has a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, a Masters and Bachelors in engineering from Dartmouth College, and a Bachelors in history from Haverford College.

AI and cloud growth are pushing electric grids to their limits, reshaping where and how data centers can be built. In this session, a principal investigator from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITei) will share strategies for securing low-carbon, reliable power while integrating facilities into urban and industrial systems. Topics include grid-aware siting, on-site generation, advanced cooling, and policy frameworks that balance the needs of operators, utilities, and communities.

12:15 PM

Senior Advisor, MIT Media Lab

Michael Casey

Senior Advisor, MIT Media Lab

Michael Casey is a senior advisor at the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative and a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. He and his colleagues are seeking to build awareness around digital currencies and their underlying blockchain technology, helping shape scholarship around the topic and exploring dedicated research projects that use this emerging technology to achieve social impact goals.

Before joining MIT, Michael was a senior columnist covering global finance at The Wall Street Journal, where he culminated a two-decade career in print journalism that spanned various roles and stints on five continents. He also hosted online TV shows for WSJ Live and frequently appeared on various networks as a commentator, including CNBC, CNN, Fox Business, and the BBC. He recently revived his involvement with media, taking on a role as Chairman of the Advisory Board at blockchain news outlet CoinDesk and this year founded his own media company, Streambed Media, which focuses on themes of innovation and society.

Michael is the author of five books on the digital economy and Internet culture. In 2015, he and co-author Paul Vigna published the critically acclaimed The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order and three years later published its sequel, The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything. He has also collaborated with documentary filmmakers on the same topic and is frequently called on to speak about these issues at conferences and other public events.

Michael has written three other books: The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life, which he co-wrote with social media entrepreneur Oliver Luckett, The Unfair Trade: How our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class, an analysis of the global dimensions of the 2008 financial crisis, and Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image, about the famous photo of Ernesto "Che" Guevara by Alberto Korda.

A native of Perth, Australia, Michael is a graduate of the University of Western in Australia and has higher degrees from Cornell University and Curtin University.

Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang is a globally recognized technology and strategy expert who helps organizations future-proof themselves at the intersection of AI, data, and human insight. She is the CEO of the Advanced AI Society, an industry association uniting leading innovators to prove, pilot, and promote open, trustworthy AI infrastructure across every layer of the tech stack. Tricia brings over two decades of experience advising Fortune 500 companies like Google, Spotify, and P&G on data strategy, digital transformation, and responsible AI deployment.

Long before today’s AI boom, Tricia foresaw the rise of machine intelligence and the dangers of misusing it. As an ethnographer embedded inside Nokia during its decline, she saw how over-reliance on dashboards and KPIs blinded leadership to shifting customer needs. From this experience, she coined the term quantification bias—the tendency to favor what’s measurable over what matters—and introduced thick data to describe the human context that big data often misses.

Her TED talk brought these concepts to a global audience, making the case that the best way to future-proof an organization is to stay deeply connected to customers. In today’s era of generative AI, the quantification bias is even harder to detect, and ignoring thick data is even riskier.

To address this, Tricia founded Sudden Compass, a consultancy that helped companies integrate thick data into decision-making and build the internal governance and change systems to act on it. Her work proved that data transformation—and now AI transformation—isn’t just about technology. It’s about leadership, alignment, and strategic clarity.

Tricia has deep international experience, from building innovation labs in China to designing data equity initiatives in South America. She co-founded Crypto Research and Design Lab with the World Economic Forum as a partner, which was acquired by Crypto Council for Innovation.

She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and is affiliated with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, Data & Society, the Atlantic Council, and the US-Japan Leadership Program. She’s a Global Expert at Singularity University and a sought-after speaker on AI, data, tech ethics, and organizational strategy.

Tricia’s cross-sector path from enterprises to non-profits, from space science to grassroots media, from global tech ethnography to decentralized AI, reflects a lifelong commitment to making complex systems more accountable to the people they affect. Her work is grounded in one belief: technology must serve human dignity, not erode it.

As AI evolves, decentralized architectures—processing at the edge rather than in massive centralized facilities—are reshaping data center roles and requirements. This talk will examine how these approaches can ease grid reliance, boost resilience, and shift the balance between edge and core infrastructure. Drawing on MIT research, the speaker will outline the technical, operational, and policy implications for building data centers that thrive in a distributed AI landscape.

12:30 PM

Lunch & Networking
1:30 PM

Climate and Sustainability Implications of Computing Hardware

Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Elsa Olivetti

Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Professor Olivetti received a BS in engineering science from the University of Virginia in 2000, and a PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT in 2007. She spent her PhD program studying the electrochemistry of polymer and inorganic materials for electrodes in lithium-ion batteries. In 2014, she joined DMSE as an assistant professor. As an educator, Olivetti overhauled DMSE’s undergraduate curriculum and developed new courses, including one for the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Climate Scholars. She’s a member of the MIT Climate Nucleus and co-director of the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium.

Professor Elsa Olivetti’s research focuses on improving the environmental and economic sustainability of materials. Specifically, she develops analytical and computational models to provide early-stage information on the cost and environmental impact of materials. Professor Olivetti and her research-group colleagues work toward improving sustainability through increased use of recycled and renewable materials, recycling-friendly material design, and intelligent waste disposition. The Olivetti Group also focuses on understanding the implications of substitution, dematerialization, and waste mining on materials markets. 

Data centers have a significant embodied and operational carbon footprint. This talk presents MIT's perspective on how to balance the benefit of the use of data flowing into and out of data centers with the burden of computing and data center equipment. 

2:00 PM

Professor of Building Technology and Mechanical Engineering Post-Tenure

Leon Glicksman

Professor of Building Technology and Mechanical Engineering Post-Tenure

Leon Glicksman, Professor of Building Technology and Mechanical Engineering, works on research and consulting related to energy-efficient building components and design, natural ventilation, sustainable design for developing countries, and design tools.

He founded and was head of MIT’s Building Technology Program in the Department of Architecture for 22 years. He has worked on research and consulting related to energy-efficient building components and design, indoor airflow and indoor air quality.  Basic studies were carried out to improve thermal insulation for buildings during the period when CFCs were removed from insulation. Research has developed aerogel insulations that promise to be as much as four times more efficient than present insulations.  Glicksman was a founding member of the MIT Energy Initiative and co-chaired a task force to promote energy efficient measures for the MIT campus and to develop the next generation of technologies for buildings. Another research project included software tools for automatic identification of major faults in commercial building HVAC systems. The work identified faults that caused as much as one half million dollars a year in operating faults in a single building on the MIT campus. Several MIT BT students have founded a company to commercialize the tool and now have systems installed on most MIT buildings, as well as operations across the US and Europe.

Experiments and CFD simulations are being used to develop system performance evaluation and design guidelines for displacement ventilation and natural ventilation in US and foreign buildings. This included a study of the application of natural ventilation to buildings to improve indoor air quality and reduce energy use for air conditioning that was jointly carried out over five years with Cambridge University. Research was carried out with a major developer in Japan to design natural ventilation for new office buildings in central Tokyo. Design tools have been developed that can be used to predict natural ventilation flows, comfort level and energy efficiency in new building designs. These tools are more easily used by designers and engineers during the early conceptual stage of the building design. Recent research is focused on understanding the spread of Covid aerosols in classrooms based on CFD simulations.

Research on energy-efficient urban housing for China was carried out with MIT and Chinese colleagues for five years and is summarized in a book he coauthored.  Research was focused on design tools and optimum control for hybrid natural ventilation/ mechanical cooling with design collaborations for several new buildings in three areas of China. There has been an ongoing program in India to develop passive designs using ventilation and night cooling for new housing for low-income families in Gujarat. Working with a NGO, small scale demonstration buildings as well as new single and multi-story buildings have been constructed and are being evaluated. These are also being used to evaluate different roof systems with double skin vents and thermal mass. Research is also underway to develop a novel low-cost evaporative cooling system to preserve farm produce in East Africa and in India. 

Glicksman is a consultant to numerous agencies and companies, most recently the World Bank, He has been awarded the ASME Melville Medal and the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award. He is a fellow of the ASME and ASHRAE.  He is the author of more than two hundred articles published in refereed journals or proceedings and two books.

High-performance data centers demand advanced thermal management, electrical design, and infrastructure resilience. This session will explore best practices and emerging frontiers in core systems engineering.

2:30 PM

Senior Staff Member, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Vijay Gadepally

Senior Staff Member, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Dr. Vijay Gadepally is a member of the senior staff in the Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In this role, he works closely with the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Gadepally's research interests include high-performance computing applications in artificial intelligence, machine learning, graph algorithms, and data management.

Gadepally holds a BTech degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and MSc and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering from The Ohio State University, where he received an Outstanding Graduate Student Award in 2011. In 2016, Gadepally received an MIT Lincoln Laboratory Early Career Technical Achievement Award. In 2017, he was named to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International's inaugural 40 Under 40 list, which recognizes individuals for their innovation in applying information technology to R&D involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As AI workloads grow increasingly complex, orchestration is becoming a crucial layer in modern data centers. This session examines how intelligent scheduling, workload-aware optimization, and infrastructure co-design can enhance performance, reduce costs, and maximize the efficient use of compute, storage, and networking resources across edge, cloud, and hybrid environments.

3:00 PM

Coffee & Networking Break
3:30 PM
Manager of Partnerships & Engagement, MIT Startup Exchange
Tricia Dinkel
Manager of Partnerships & Engagement

Tricia Dinkel comes to Corporate Relations with several years of experience in the innovation ecosystem and managing relationships with startups and corporates. Tricia previously worked as Director of Navigate (NECEC’s flagship innovation program) at the Northeast Clean Energy Council (NECEC) in Boston where she led all operations and partnership development for 400+ startups, 65+ innovation partners, and 200+ investors & corporates in North America and Europe. Prior to that role, Tricia held positions with increasing responsibility in program management at NECEC. Before that, her experience included Director of Data Analytics and Sustainability Reporting Manager at WegoWise Inc. in Boston, Associate Director at the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation in Cambridge, Senior Sustainability Coordinator at A Better City in Boston, and Assistant Director at The Green Alliance in Portsmouth, NH.

Tricia earned her B.A., in Environmental Studies/Natural Resource Policy at the University of Colorado, and her M.A., in Environmental Science Education at the University of New Hampshire. She served on the NECEC Diversity & Inclusion Committee and as a member of the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council), Massachusetts Chapter.

Advanced Power Delivery
Tim Carr

Director of Business Development, Commercial & Industrial, VEIR

Tim Carr

Director of Business Development, Commercial & Industrial, VEIR

Tim Carr is Director of Business Development, Commercial & Industrial at VEIR, where he leads customer relationships and go-to-market strategy for VEIR’s superconducting power delivery solutions. He works with commercial and industrial clients facing rising power density challenges in data center and infrastructure environments. 

Before joining VEIR, Tim was Senior Vice President of Business Development at Dynamic Energy, where he oversaw national sales efforts and launched new product offerings. He brings over 15 years of experience in energy infrastructure sales and project development, with clients including JPMorgan Chase, Kingspan, and Lowe’s. Tim has a strong background in sales leadership, financial modeling, and project management, as well as prior experience in global metals trading and international business. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, Summa Cum Laude, from the University at Albany (SUNY). 

Providing the Next-Gen, Clean Cement Production Technology for the Builders of the Future
Cory Waltrip

Director of Business Development, Sublime Systems

Cory Waltrip

Director of Business Development, Sublime Systems

Cory is Director of Business Development & Strategy at Sublime Systems, where he leads commercial partnerships with developers and corporations across the many sectors that use concrete. He designed and negotiated the first-ever cement purchase agreement with Microsoft. Previously, he worked at Google X and IBM, where he managed global engineering and design teams that built solutions for investor-owned utilities. Cory holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, an MS in Energy Systems from Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, and a BS in Economics and International Affairs from American University.

3:50 PM
Nir Shavit

Nir Shavit received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in 1984 and 1986, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1990. Shavit is a co-author of the book The Art of Multiprocessor Programming. He is a recipient of the 2004 Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science for his work on applying tools from algebraic topology to model shared memory computability and of the 2012 Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing for the introduction of Software Transactional Memory. For many years his main interests were techniques for designing, implementing, and reasoning about multiprocessor algorithms. These days he is interested in understanding the relationship between deep learning and how neural tissue computes and is part of an effort to do so by extracting connectivity maps of brain, a field called connectomics. Nir is the principal investigator of the Multiprocessor Algorithmics Group and the Computational Connectomics Group.

AI inference workloads are exploding—and with them a new type of parameter-driven computation that, unlike the data-driven computations of the past, requires a new execution layer between the models and the hardware they run on. In steps Red-Hat with its VLLM based Inference Server, a highly efficient run-time that provides seamless efficient execution of models, no matter how large, on a multitude of state-of-the-art acceleration hardware. I will discuss VLLM, the technical issues in designing this new inference abstraction layer, and how it will change the industry. 

4:00 PM

Senior Vice President, Data Center Strategy, FM

Kevin Bradshaw

Senior Vice President, Data Center Strategy, FM

Kevin Bradshaw is responsible for developing market-leading products and services to ensure a resilient future for our data center clients.

Since joining the company in 1986 as loss prevention consultant in Dallas, Texas, USA, Bradshaw has served in many engineering and operations roles, including vice president, operations manager, Forest Products and Latin America; senior vice president, Western division, Frisco, Texas, USA, and most recently, senior vice president, chief innovation officer, FM Inno Ventures.

Bradshaw holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA.

What happens when the lights go out, the cooling fails, or a flood reaches the server room? From their unique role insuring and protecting mission-critical facilities worldwide, FM has seen and helped clients recover from the kinds of events that can take a data center offline and cost millions in minutes. In this thought-provoking session, Kevin Bradshaw will share real-world patterns in risk and resilience, why costly failures often aren’t the most obvious, and how leaders can make data centers not just highly efficient, but truly unshakable.

4:15 PM
Neil Gershenfeld

Prof. Neil Gershenfeld is the Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, where his unique laboratory is breaking down boundaries between the digital and physical worlds, from pioneering quantum computing to digital fabrication to the Internet of Things. Technology from his lab has been seen and used in settings including New York's Museum of Modern Art and rural Indian villages, the White House and the World Economic Forum, inner-city community centers and automobile safety systems, Las Vegas shows and Sami herds. He is the author of numerous technical publications, patents, and books including Designing RealityFabWhen Things Start To ThinkThe Nature of Mathematical Modeling, and The Physics of Information Technology, and has been featured in media such as The New York Times, The EconomistNPRCNN, and PBS. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society, has been named one of Scientific American's 50 leaders in science and technology, as one of 40 Modern-Day Leonardos by the Museum of Science and Industry, one of Popular Mechanic's 25 Makers, has been selected as a CNN/Time/Fortune Principal Voice, and by Prospect/Foreign Policy as one of the top 100 public intellectuals. He's been called the intellectual father of the maker movement, founding a growing global network of over two thousand fab labs in 125 countries that provide widespread access to prototype tools for personal fabrication, directing the Fab Academy for distributed research and education in the principles and practices of digital fabrication, and chairing the Fab Foundation. He is a co-founder of the Interspecies Internet and of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Dr. Gershenfeld has a BA in Physics with High Honors from Swarthmore College, a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University, honorary doctorates from Swarthmore College, Strathclyde University and the University of Antwerp, was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows, and a member of the research staff at Bell Labs.

Imagine a radically different future for compute infrastructure. This keynote explores emerging insights into the construction of computation, from programming atoms to buildings.

4:50 PM
Program Director, MIT Industrial Liaison Program
Jim Flynn
Jim Flynn
Program Director

Before MIT, Jim was the assistant dean of research business development at the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences. Jim founded, built, and sold multiple technology companies in fintech and online media. He has bootstrapped startups and closed venture capital, angel, and private equity funding rounds. Jim also served as the Chief Operating Officer of a public company and a subsidiary of Pitney Bowes. He began his career at AT&T as a software developer, hardware engineer, and national account manager. Jim has authored patents and wrote one of the first books on Java programming. Out of all the roles he's held, Jim's favorite job title by far is dedicated dad of four. He earned a BS from Manhattan College and an MBA with concentrations in finance and international business from New York University.

MIT Corporate Relations wraps up the day with key takeaways and a look at where the Data Center conversation goes next. 

5:00 PM

Pizza, Beer & Brainstorming

Wrap up the day over pizza and beer with fellow attendees. Compare notes, swap takeaways, and explore ideas sparked by the sessions in a relaxed, informal setting.

  • Agenda
    8:30 AM

    Registration and Check-in
    8:50 AM
    Program Director, MIT Industrial Liaison Program
    Jim Flynn
    Jim Flynn
    Program Director

    Before MIT, Jim was the assistant dean of research business development at the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences. Jim founded, built, and sold multiple technology companies in fintech and online media. He has bootstrapped startups and closed venture capital, angel, and private equity funding rounds. Jim also served as the Chief Operating Officer of a public company and a subsidiary of Pitney Bowes. He began his career at AT&T as a software developer, hardware engineer, and national account manager. Jim has authored patents and wrote one of the first books on Java programming. Out of all the roles he's held, Jim's favorite job title by far is dedicated dad of four. He earned a BS from Manhattan College and an MBA with concentrations in finance and international business from New York University.

    An introduction to the day’s themes, objectives, and structure. A representative from MIT Corporate Relations will highlight the relevance of data center innovation in the era of AI and global digitization.

    9:00 AM

    Leader of the FundamentalAI Group, MIT FutureTech

    Jonathan Rosenfeld

    Leader of the FundamentalAI Group, MIT FutureTech

    Jonathan (“Jonny”) Rosenfeld leads the FundamentalAI group at MIT FutureTech — focusing on the fundamental safety and performance limits of deep learning and AGI, their attainment, and predictability.

    Dr. Rosenfeld’s interests lie at the intersection of fundamental science and large-scale impact across Academia and Industry. In industry, he has directed large-scale research and development teams, including hundreds of engineers, across disciplines including AI, genomics, physics, and information theory; and currently leads efforts at the intersection of AI and stem cell biology as Co-Founder and CTO of somite.ai. In 2019, at MIT, he was among the pioneers of Deep Learning scaling laws, which have underpinned fundamental progress in the field (and hypothesized these to be exponentially suboptimal). His work twice received the Israeli Defense Prize, akin to the USA's Medal of Freedom.

    He holds five degrees: a Ph.D. and MSc in CS from MIT; a BA in Physics, BSc in EE, and an MBA from the Technion.

    The rapid rise of foundation models and real-time inference is transforming the scale and nature of compute demand, outpacing historical trends and stressing existing infrastructure. This session explores how the evolution of modern AI workloads is driving the need for new data center strategies, including decisions around compute scaling, energy use, system architecture, and geographic deployment. It will also examine how research and innovation at the intersection of AI and compute economics are shaping the future of infrastructure planning.

    9:30 AM

    Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    Associate Director, Research Laboratory of Electronics
    Professor, Department of Physics 
    Laboratory Fellow Emeritus, Lincoln Laboratory
    Director, Center for Quantum Engineering

    Will Oliver

    Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    Associate Director, Research Laboratory of Electronics
    Professor, Department of Physics 
    Laboratory Fellow Emeritus, Lincoln Laboratory
    Director, Center for Quantum Engineering

    William D. Oliver is jointly appointed the Henry Ellis Warren (1894) Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves as the Director of the Center for Quantum Engineering and as Associate Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. He is a Principal Investigator in the Engineering Quantum Systems Group at MIT campus. He provides programmatic and technical leadership targeting the development of quantum and classical high-performance computing technologies. Will’s research interests include the materials growth, fabrication, design, and measurement of superconducting qubits, as well as the development of cryogenic packaging and control electronics involving cryogenic CMOS and single-flux quantum digital logic.

    From 2003-2023, Will also worked at Lincoln Laboratory — most recently as a Laboratory Fellow (2017-2023) — with the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group. Over those 20 years, Will was instrumental in growing the quantum group to its present levels. In February 2023, Will stepped down from this position, due to a perceived organizational conflict of interest with his outside professional activities. Nonetheless, he and the EQuS group maintain a strong collaborative relationship with the Laboratory.

    Will is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He serves on the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, the US Committee for Superconducting Electronics, and is an IEEE Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC) Board Member.

    Will received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and B.A. in Japanese from the University of Rochester (NY).

    Quantum computing is moving rapidly from theoretical curiosity to an emerging tool with the potential to reshape entire industries. This session will introduce the core principles, terminology, and architectures of quantum systems, outline what they can and cannot do compared to classical computing, and explore where the field is headed. We’ll also touch on the potential implications for high‑performance computing environments and why forward‑looking organizations are tracking quantum’s progress now.

    10:00 AM
    Saurabh Amin

    Saurabh Amin’s research focuses on the design and control of infrastructure systems through the use of game theory and network optimization. His group works in three main areas: (1) resilient network control, (2) information systems and incentive design, and (3) optimal resource allocation in large-scale infrastructure systems. By addressing critical questions in highway transportation, electric power distribution, and urban water networks, the group develops new theories and design tools to improve the performance of essential infrastructure systems in the face of both stochastic and adversarial disruptions.

    The group’s research agenda centers on designing network monitoring and control algorithms, as well as economic incentive schemes, that enable infrastructure users and operators to make optimal decisions under uncertainty. This agenda is advanced through an approach that: (i) models cyber-physical interactions in infrastructures and evaluates their vulnerabilities; (ii) develops tools to detect and respond to both local and network-level failures; and (iii) designs incentive schemes that enhance aggregate levels of public good while accounting for dependencies and private information among strategic entities.

    Data centers must be designed to operate reliably in the face of environmental shocks, resource constraints, and long-term system uncertainty. This session explores how scenario modeling and system-level foresight can inform infrastructure planning, balancing performance, sustainability, and adaptability in an evolving energy and policy landscape. We’ll examine how advanced modeling tools and data-driven strategies can help decision-makers anticipate and adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

    10:30 AM

    Coffee & Networking Break 
    11:00 AM
    Christoph Reinhart

    Christoph Reinhart is a building scientist and architectural educator working in the field of sustainable building design and environmental modeling. At MIT, he is leading the Sustainable Design Lab (SDL), an inter-disciplinary group with a grounding in architecture that develops design workflows, planning tools, and metrics to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings and neighborhoods. He is also a managing member of Solemma, a technology company and Harvard University spinoff, and served as strategic development advisor and cofounder for MIT spinoff mapdwell until it joined Palmetto Clean Technology in 2021. Products originating from SDL and Solemma are used in practice and education in over 90 countries.

    Before joining MIT in 2012, Christoph led the sustainable design concentration area at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where the student forum voted him the 2009 Teacher of the Year for the Department of Architecture. From 1997 to 2008, Christoph had worked as a staff scientist at the National Research Council of Canada and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany. He has authored over 160 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including two textbooks on daylighting and seven book chapters. His work has been supported by a variety of organizations, from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and the Governments of Canada, Germany, Kuwait, and Portugal to Autodesk, Exelon, Kalwall, Philips, Saint Gobain, Shell, and United Technology Corporation.

    Christoph’s work has been recognized with various awards, among them a Fraunhofer Bessel Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2018), the IBPSA-USA Distinguished Achievement Award (2016), a Star of Building in Science award by Buildings4Change magazine (2013), and seven best paper awards. Mapdwell has been recognized with FastCompany’s Design by Innovation 2015 award for Data Visualization as well as a Sustainia 100 award. Christoph is a physicist by training and holds a doctorate in architecture from the Technical University of Karlsruhe.

    Modular and climate-adaptive data centers can provide flexibility and resilience. We’ll explore how new design strategies and dynamic building envelopes can support evolving workloads.

    11:30 AM

    Senior Staff in Cyber Security and Resilient Systems Group, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

    Hamed Okhravi

    Senior Staff in Cyber Security and Resilient Systems Group, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

    Dr. Hamed Okhravi is a senior staff member in the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group, where he leads programs and conducts research in the area of systems security. His research interests include cybersecurity, science of security, security evaluation, and operating systems. He is the recipient of the Stratus Award for Cloud Computing (2020), two R&D 100 Awards (2020 and 2018), MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Best Invention Award (2019), MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Team Award (2015), National Security Agency's 3rd Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition Award (2015), and MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Early Career Technical Achievement Award (2014) for his research.  

    He is an associate editor of the IEEE Security & Privacy journal. He has also served twice as the program chair for the ACM Moving Target Defense (MTD) workshop, the poster chair of the IEEE SecDev Conference, and a guest editor of the IEEE Security & Privacy – Special Issue on Hacking without Humans. In addition, he has served on the steering committee of the ACM MTD workshop, and as a program committee member for many academic conferences and workshops including NDSS, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, RAID, AsiaCCS, IEEE DAC, IEEE SecDev, IEEE/ACM ICCAD, MILCOM, and ACNS, among others. He has also served on the National Science Foundation's Panel for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program.

    Okhravi actively contributes to various national, Laboratory, and division-level strategic planning activities, and has led the development of multiple national-level R&D roadmaps. He has also led the development of multiple systems security technologies that have successfully transitioned outside and inside Lincoln Laboratory. His work has resulted in multiple U.S. patents and numerous publications in top-tier venues.

    Okhravi’s current focus is researching and developing a Resilient Mission Computer, a new computer system design in which important security properties are inherent and multiple large classes of vulnerabilities are prevented by design.

    Okhravi earned his MS and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006 and 2010, respectively.

    As data centers grow more critical to new AI applications, finance, and industrial operations, they’ve become prime targets for cyber, physical, and supply chain threats. This session explores strategies to identify, prioritize, and mitigate risks across the infrastructure stack, from hardware and software to organizational workflows. Topics include zero-trust architecture, threat modeling, ransomware readiness, and systemic resilience. Drawing from real-world cases and research, we’ll examine how leaders can design secure systems that are also agile and scalable.

    12:00 PM

    Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center and Eni-MIT Alliance, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)

    Morgan Andreae

    Executive Director, Future Energy Systems Center and Eni-MIT Alliance, MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)

    Morgan Andreae is the executive director of MITEI’s Future Energy Systems Center. Prior to joining MITEI, Andreae was the executive director of technology and innovation at Cummins where he led teams in the development of new battery, fuel cell, electrolyzer, and electric traction technologies. Over the course of his career Andreae has held a variety of roles in technology development, strategy, and product development, with a consistent focus on bringing more sustainable technology to market. Andreae holds over 25 patents on diesel, hybrid-electric, and electric powertrain technology. He has a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT, a Masters and Bachelors in engineering from Dartmouth College, and a Bachelors in history from Haverford College.

    AI and cloud growth are pushing electric grids to their limits, reshaping where and how data centers can be built. In this session, a principal investigator from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITei) will share strategies for securing low-carbon, reliable power while integrating facilities into urban and industrial systems. Topics include grid-aware siting, on-site generation, advanced cooling, and policy frameworks that balance the needs of operators, utilities, and communities.

    12:15 PM

    Senior Advisor, MIT Media Lab

    Michael Casey

    Senior Advisor, MIT Media Lab

    Michael Casey is a senior advisor at the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative and a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. He and his colleagues are seeking to build awareness around digital currencies and their underlying blockchain technology, helping shape scholarship around the topic and exploring dedicated research projects that use this emerging technology to achieve social impact goals.

    Before joining MIT, Michael was a senior columnist covering global finance at The Wall Street Journal, where he culminated a two-decade career in print journalism that spanned various roles and stints on five continents. He also hosted online TV shows for WSJ Live and frequently appeared on various networks as a commentator, including CNBC, CNN, Fox Business, and the BBC. He recently revived his involvement with media, taking on a role as Chairman of the Advisory Board at blockchain news outlet CoinDesk and this year founded his own media company, Streambed Media, which focuses on themes of innovation and society.

    Michael is the author of five books on the digital economy and Internet culture. In 2015, he and co-author Paul Vigna published the critically acclaimed The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order and three years later published its sequel, The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything. He has also collaborated with documentary filmmakers on the same topic and is frequently called on to speak about these issues at conferences and other public events.

    Michael has written three other books: The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life, which he co-wrote with social media entrepreneur Oliver Luckett, The Unfair Trade: How our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class, an analysis of the global dimensions of the 2008 financial crisis, and Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image, about the famous photo of Ernesto "Che" Guevara by Alberto Korda.

    A native of Perth, Australia, Michael is a graduate of the University of Western in Australia and has higher degrees from Cornell University and Curtin University.

    Tricia Wang

    Tricia Wang is a globally recognized technology and strategy expert who helps organizations future-proof themselves at the intersection of AI, data, and human insight. She is the CEO of the Advanced AI Society, an industry association uniting leading innovators to prove, pilot, and promote open, trustworthy AI infrastructure across every layer of the tech stack. Tricia brings over two decades of experience advising Fortune 500 companies like Google, Spotify, and P&G on data strategy, digital transformation, and responsible AI deployment.

    Long before today’s AI boom, Tricia foresaw the rise of machine intelligence and the dangers of misusing it. As an ethnographer embedded inside Nokia during its decline, she saw how over-reliance on dashboards and KPIs blinded leadership to shifting customer needs. From this experience, she coined the term quantification bias—the tendency to favor what’s measurable over what matters—and introduced thick data to describe the human context that big data often misses.

    Her TED talk brought these concepts to a global audience, making the case that the best way to future-proof an organization is to stay deeply connected to customers. In today’s era of generative AI, the quantification bias is even harder to detect, and ignoring thick data is even riskier.

    To address this, Tricia founded Sudden Compass, a consultancy that helped companies integrate thick data into decision-making and build the internal governance and change systems to act on it. Her work proved that data transformation—and now AI transformation—isn’t just about technology. It’s about leadership, alignment, and strategic clarity.

    Tricia has deep international experience, from building innovation labs in China to designing data equity initiatives in South America. She co-founded Crypto Research and Design Lab with the World Economic Forum as a partner, which was acquired by Crypto Council for Innovation.

    She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and is affiliated with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, Data & Society, the Atlantic Council, and the US-Japan Leadership Program. She’s a Global Expert at Singularity University and a sought-after speaker on AI, data, tech ethics, and organizational strategy.

    Tricia’s cross-sector path from enterprises to non-profits, from space science to grassroots media, from global tech ethnography to decentralized AI, reflects a lifelong commitment to making complex systems more accountable to the people they affect. Her work is grounded in one belief: technology must serve human dignity, not erode it.

    As AI evolves, decentralized architectures—processing at the edge rather than in massive centralized facilities—are reshaping data center roles and requirements. This talk will examine how these approaches can ease grid reliance, boost resilience, and shift the balance between edge and core infrastructure. Drawing on MIT research, the speaker will outline the technical, operational, and policy implications for building data centers that thrive in a distributed AI landscape.

    12:30 PM

    Lunch & Networking
    1:30 PM

    Climate and Sustainability Implications of Computing Hardware

    Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

    Elsa Olivetti

    Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering

    Professor Olivetti received a BS in engineering science from the University of Virginia in 2000, and a PhD in materials science and engineering from MIT in 2007. She spent her PhD program studying the electrochemistry of polymer and inorganic materials for electrodes in lithium-ion batteries. In 2014, she joined DMSE as an assistant professor. As an educator, Olivetti overhauled DMSE’s undergraduate curriculum and developed new courses, including one for the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Climate Scholars. She’s a member of the MIT Climate Nucleus and co-director of the MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium.

    Professor Elsa Olivetti’s research focuses on improving the environmental and economic sustainability of materials. Specifically, she develops analytical and computational models to provide early-stage information on the cost and environmental impact of materials. Professor Olivetti and her research-group colleagues work toward improving sustainability through increased use of recycled and renewable materials, recycling-friendly material design, and intelligent waste disposition. The Olivetti Group also focuses on understanding the implications of substitution, dematerialization, and waste mining on materials markets. 

    Data centers have a significant embodied and operational carbon footprint. This talk presents MIT's perspective on how to balance the benefit of the use of data flowing into and out of data centers with the burden of computing and data center equipment. 

    2:00 PM

    Professor of Building Technology and Mechanical Engineering Post-Tenure

    Leon Glicksman

    Professor of Building Technology and Mechanical Engineering Post-Tenure

    Leon Glicksman, Professor of Building Technology and Mechanical Engineering, works on research and consulting related to energy-efficient building components and design, natural ventilation, sustainable design for developing countries, and design tools.

    He founded and was head of MIT’s Building Technology Program in the Department of Architecture for 22 years. He has worked on research and consulting related to energy-efficient building components and design, indoor airflow and indoor air quality.  Basic studies were carried out to improve thermal insulation for buildings during the period when CFCs were removed from insulation. Research has developed aerogel insulations that promise to be as much as four times more efficient than present insulations.  Glicksman was a founding member of the MIT Energy Initiative and co-chaired a task force to promote energy efficient measures for the MIT campus and to develop the next generation of technologies for buildings. Another research project included software tools for automatic identification of major faults in commercial building HVAC systems. The work identified faults that caused as much as one half million dollars a year in operating faults in a single building on the MIT campus. Several MIT BT students have founded a company to commercialize the tool and now have systems installed on most MIT buildings, as well as operations across the US and Europe.

    Experiments and CFD simulations are being used to develop system performance evaluation and design guidelines for displacement ventilation and natural ventilation in US and foreign buildings. This included a study of the application of natural ventilation to buildings to improve indoor air quality and reduce energy use for air conditioning that was jointly carried out over five years with Cambridge University. Research was carried out with a major developer in Japan to design natural ventilation for new office buildings in central Tokyo. Design tools have been developed that can be used to predict natural ventilation flows, comfort level and energy efficiency in new building designs. These tools are more easily used by designers and engineers during the early conceptual stage of the building design. Recent research is focused on understanding the spread of Covid aerosols in classrooms based on CFD simulations.

    Research on energy-efficient urban housing for China was carried out with MIT and Chinese colleagues for five years and is summarized in a book he coauthored.  Research was focused on design tools and optimum control for hybrid natural ventilation/ mechanical cooling with design collaborations for several new buildings in three areas of China. There has been an ongoing program in India to develop passive designs using ventilation and night cooling for new housing for low-income families in Gujarat. Working with a NGO, small scale demonstration buildings as well as new single and multi-story buildings have been constructed and are being evaluated. These are also being used to evaluate different roof systems with double skin vents and thermal mass. Research is also underway to develop a novel low-cost evaporative cooling system to preserve farm produce in East Africa and in India. 

    Glicksman is a consultant to numerous agencies and companies, most recently the World Bank, He has been awarded the ASME Melville Medal and the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award. He is a fellow of the ASME and ASHRAE.  He is the author of more than two hundred articles published in refereed journals or proceedings and two books.

    High-performance data centers demand advanced thermal management, electrical design, and infrastructure resilience. This session will explore best practices and emerging frontiers in core systems engineering.

    2:30 PM

    Senior Staff Member, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

    Vijay Gadepally

    Senior Staff Member, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

    Dr. Vijay Gadepally is a member of the senior staff in the Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In this role, he works closely with the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Gadepally's research interests include high-performance computing applications in artificial intelligence, machine learning, graph algorithms, and data management.

    Gadepally holds a BTech degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and MSc and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering from The Ohio State University, where he received an Outstanding Graduate Student Award in 2011. In 2016, Gadepally received an MIT Lincoln Laboratory Early Career Technical Achievement Award. In 2017, he was named to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International's inaugural 40 Under 40 list, which recognizes individuals for their innovation in applying information technology to R&D involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

    As AI workloads grow increasingly complex, orchestration is becoming a crucial layer in modern data centers. This session examines how intelligent scheduling, workload-aware optimization, and infrastructure co-design can enhance performance, reduce costs, and maximize the efficient use of compute, storage, and networking resources across edge, cloud, and hybrid environments.

    3:00 PM

    Coffee & Networking Break
    3:30 PM
    Manager of Partnerships & Engagement, MIT Startup Exchange
    Tricia Dinkel
    Manager of Partnerships & Engagement

    Tricia Dinkel comes to Corporate Relations with several years of experience in the innovation ecosystem and managing relationships with startups and corporates. Tricia previously worked as Director of Navigate (NECEC’s flagship innovation program) at the Northeast Clean Energy Council (NECEC) in Boston where she led all operations and partnership development for 400+ startups, 65+ innovation partners, and 200+ investors & corporates in North America and Europe. Prior to that role, Tricia held positions with increasing responsibility in program management at NECEC. Before that, her experience included Director of Data Analytics and Sustainability Reporting Manager at WegoWise Inc. in Boston, Associate Director at the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation in Cambridge, Senior Sustainability Coordinator at A Better City in Boston, and Assistant Director at The Green Alliance in Portsmouth, NH.

    Tricia earned her B.A., in Environmental Studies/Natural Resource Policy at the University of Colorado, and her M.A., in Environmental Science Education at the University of New Hampshire. She served on the NECEC Diversity & Inclusion Committee and as a member of the USGBC (U.S. Green Building Council), Massachusetts Chapter.

    Advanced Power Delivery
    Tim Carr

    Director of Business Development, Commercial & Industrial, VEIR

    Tim Carr

    Director of Business Development, Commercial & Industrial, VEIR

    Tim Carr is Director of Business Development, Commercial & Industrial at VEIR, where he leads customer relationships and go-to-market strategy for VEIR’s superconducting power delivery solutions. He works with commercial and industrial clients facing rising power density challenges in data center and infrastructure environments. 

    Before joining VEIR, Tim was Senior Vice President of Business Development at Dynamic Energy, where he oversaw national sales efforts and launched new product offerings. He brings over 15 years of experience in energy infrastructure sales and project development, with clients including JPMorgan Chase, Kingspan, and Lowe’s. Tim has a strong background in sales leadership, financial modeling, and project management, as well as prior experience in global metals trading and international business. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, Summa Cum Laude, from the University at Albany (SUNY). 

    Providing the Next-Gen, Clean Cement Production Technology for the Builders of the Future
    Cory Waltrip

    Director of Business Development, Sublime Systems

    Cory Waltrip

    Director of Business Development, Sublime Systems

    Cory is Director of Business Development & Strategy at Sublime Systems, where he leads commercial partnerships with developers and corporations across the many sectors that use concrete. He designed and negotiated the first-ever cement purchase agreement with Microsoft. Previously, he worked at Google X and IBM, where he managed global engineering and design teams that built solutions for investor-owned utilities. Cory holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, an MS in Energy Systems from Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, and a BS in Economics and International Affairs from American University.

    3:50 PM
    Nir Shavit

    Nir Shavit received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in 1984 and 1986, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1990. Shavit is a co-author of the book The Art of Multiprocessor Programming. He is a recipient of the 2004 Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science for his work on applying tools from algebraic topology to model shared memory computability and of the 2012 Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing for the introduction of Software Transactional Memory. For many years his main interests were techniques for designing, implementing, and reasoning about multiprocessor algorithms. These days he is interested in understanding the relationship between deep learning and how neural tissue computes and is part of an effort to do so by extracting connectivity maps of brain, a field called connectomics. Nir is the principal investigator of the Multiprocessor Algorithmics Group and the Computational Connectomics Group.

    AI inference workloads are exploding—and with them a new type of parameter-driven computation that, unlike the data-driven computations of the past, requires a new execution layer between the models and the hardware they run on. In steps Red-Hat with its VLLM based Inference Server, a highly efficient run-time that provides seamless efficient execution of models, no matter how large, on a multitude of state-of-the-art acceleration hardware. I will discuss VLLM, the technical issues in designing this new inference abstraction layer, and how it will change the industry. 

    4:00 PM

    Senior Vice President, Data Center Strategy, FM

    Kevin Bradshaw

    Senior Vice President, Data Center Strategy, FM

    Kevin Bradshaw is responsible for developing market-leading products and services to ensure a resilient future for our data center clients.

    Since joining the company in 1986 as loss prevention consultant in Dallas, Texas, USA, Bradshaw has served in many engineering and operations roles, including vice president, operations manager, Forest Products and Latin America; senior vice president, Western division, Frisco, Texas, USA, and most recently, senior vice president, chief innovation officer, FM Inno Ventures.

    Bradshaw holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    What happens when the lights go out, the cooling fails, or a flood reaches the server room? From their unique role insuring and protecting mission-critical facilities worldwide, FM has seen and helped clients recover from the kinds of events that can take a data center offline and cost millions in minutes. In this thought-provoking session, Kevin Bradshaw will share real-world patterns in risk and resilience, why costly failures often aren’t the most obvious, and how leaders can make data centers not just highly efficient, but truly unshakable.

    4:15 PM
    Neil Gershenfeld

    Prof. Neil Gershenfeld is the Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, where his unique laboratory is breaking down boundaries between the digital and physical worlds, from pioneering quantum computing to digital fabrication to the Internet of Things. Technology from his lab has been seen and used in settings including New York's Museum of Modern Art and rural Indian villages, the White House and the World Economic Forum, inner-city community centers and automobile safety systems, Las Vegas shows and Sami herds. He is the author of numerous technical publications, patents, and books including Designing RealityFabWhen Things Start To ThinkThe Nature of Mathematical Modeling, and The Physics of Information Technology, and has been featured in media such as The New York Times, The EconomistNPRCNN, and PBS. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society, has been named one of Scientific American's 50 leaders in science and technology, as one of 40 Modern-Day Leonardos by the Museum of Science and Industry, one of Popular Mechanic's 25 Makers, has been selected as a CNN/Time/Fortune Principal Voice, and by Prospect/Foreign Policy as one of the top 100 public intellectuals. He's been called the intellectual father of the maker movement, founding a growing global network of over two thousand fab labs in 125 countries that provide widespread access to prototype tools for personal fabrication, directing the Fab Academy for distributed research and education in the principles and practices of digital fabrication, and chairing the Fab Foundation. He is a co-founder of the Interspecies Internet and of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Dr. Gershenfeld has a BA in Physics with High Honors from Swarthmore College, a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Cornell University, honorary doctorates from Swarthmore College, Strathclyde University and the University of Antwerp, was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows, and a member of the research staff at Bell Labs.

    Imagine a radically different future for compute infrastructure. This keynote explores emerging insights into the construction of computation, from programming atoms to buildings.

    4:50 PM
    Program Director, MIT Industrial Liaison Program
    Jim Flynn
    Jim Flynn
    Program Director

    Before MIT, Jim was the assistant dean of research business development at the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences. Jim founded, built, and sold multiple technology companies in fintech and online media. He has bootstrapped startups and closed venture capital, angel, and private equity funding rounds. Jim also served as the Chief Operating Officer of a public company and a subsidiary of Pitney Bowes. He began his career at AT&T as a software developer, hardware engineer, and national account manager. Jim has authored patents and wrote one of the first books on Java programming. Out of all the roles he's held, Jim's favorite job title by far is dedicated dad of four. He earned a BS from Manhattan College and an MBA with concentrations in finance and international business from New York University.

    MIT Corporate Relations wraps up the day with key takeaways and a look at where the Data Center conversation goes next. 

    5:00 PM

    Pizza, Beer & Brainstorming

    Wrap up the day over pizza and beer with fellow attendees. Compare notes, swap takeaways, and explore ideas sparked by the sessions in a relaxed, informal setting.