Harnessing AI to Accelerate Digital Transformation
In today's competitive business landscape, digital transformation has become an imperative for all organizations. By integrating digital strategy and technologies into their operations and processes, organizations can foster innovation, boost productivity, and unlock significant value.
AI is poised to further accelerate this transformative process by harnessing the power of large-scale data analysis. Notably, Generative AI techniques have emerged as transformative tools, unveiling novel insights that might have otherwise remained concealed in the data. This paves the way for exciting opportunities, enabling organizations to create truly distinctive products, services, and experiences.
At this conference, we will delve into the implications of Generative AI on industry, innovation, and society at large:
Through stimulating discussions with esteemed academics, industry pioneers, and forward-thinking professionals, attendees will be able to explore how large language models can augment human capabilities, influence enterprise strategy, and understand the necessary controls and incentives to ensure that all sectors of society can reap the benefits of these advancements.
Book your hotel room at Marriott with group rate ($379+tax)
Guests may reserve their rooms by calling Marriott Central Reservations at 1-800-228-9290 or by using the reservation link. Guests may book their rooms online no later than October 2, 2023, to receive the discounted rate for the room block.
John Roberts has been Executive Director of MIT Corporate Relations (Interim) since February 2022. He obtained his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at MIT and returned to the university after a 20-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, joining the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in 2013. Prior to his return, John worked at small, medium, and large companies, holding positions that allowed him to exploit his passions in synthetic chemistry, project leadership, and alliance management while growing his responsibilities for managing others, ultimately as a department head. As a program director at MIT, John built a portfolio of ILP member companies, mostly in the pharmaceutical industry and headquartered in Japan, connecting them to engagement opportunities in the MIT community. Soon after returning to MIT, John began to lead a group of program directors with a combined portfolio of 60-80 global companies. In his current role, John oversees MIT Corporate Relations which houses ILP and MIT Startup Exchange.
Dr. Rong is a Program Director of Corporate Relations at MIT. He currently supervises a group of ILP program directors who promote and manage the interactions and relationships between the research at MIT and companies worldwide to help them stay abreast of the latest developments in technology and business practices.
Previously, Dr. Rong founded IKA, LLC. He has led corporate development and product innovation and provided strategic advice to companies in corporate strategy, IT leadership, digital transformation, AI, enterprise content management, and customer relationships. He held senior roles in Harte-Hanks and Vignette Corporation. He held an EU postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he started global collaborative research.
Dr. Rong is on the board of multiple organizations, including the MIT Sloan Alumni Association of Boston from 2009 to 2012. He chaired MIT Sloan CIO Symposium from 2009-2011. He is a senior expert invited by international organizations.
Dr. Rong holds an M.B.A. in global and innovation leadership from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Ph.D in numerical computing from the University of Guelph in Canada.
Alex "Sandy" Pentland directs MIT's Connection Science initiative and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program and is a founding member of advisory boards for the World Economic Forum, AT&T, Telefonica, United Nations, and Nissan. He previously helped create and direct MIT's Media Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital's Center for Future Health.
Forbes magazine declared Pentland "one of the seven most powerful data scientists in the world," along with the founders of Google and the CTO of the United States. Pentland is among the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and a pioneer in big data analytics, computational social science, organizational engineering, and wearable computing. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, the World Economic Forum, and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features including "Nova" and "Scientific American Frontiers." His most recent books are Social Physics, and Trust :: Data.
Interesting experiences include winning the DARPA 40th Anniversary of the Internet Grand Challenge, dining with British Royalty and the President of India, staging fashion shows in Paris, Tokyo, and New York, and developing a method for counting beavers from space.
LLMs like GPT have great potential, but have limited ability to handle company proprietary data, customer proprietary data, or personal data in a way that leverages company/client/employee data, preserves proprietary and personal data boundaries, and is compliant with current and emerging regulation. I will present ways of achieving these ends, as well as minimizing consequences for the mistakes and biases that will inevitably happen.
Daron Acemoglu an Institute Professor at MIT and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, the British Academy of Sciences, the Turkish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the European Economic Association, and the Society of Labor Economists. He is also a member of the Group of Thirty.
He is the author of six books, including New York Times bestseller Why Nations Fail: Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (joint with James A. Robinson), Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty (with James A. Robinson), and Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (with Simon Johnson).
His academic work covers a wide range of areas, including political economy, economic development, economic growth, technological change, inequality, labor economics and economics of networks.
Daron Acemoglu has received the inaugural T. W. Shultz Prize from the University of Chicago in 2004, and the inaugural Sherwin Rosen Award for outstanding contribution to labor economics in 2004, Distinguished Science Award from the Turkish Sciences Association in 2006, the John von Neumann Award, Rajk College, Budapest in 2007, the Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize in 2018, the Global Economy Prize in 2019, and the CME Mathematical and Statistical Research Institute prize in 2021.
He was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in 2012, and the 2016 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award.
He holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Utrecht, the Bosporus University, University of Athens, Bilkent University, the University of Bath, Ecole Normale Superieure, Saclay Paris, and the London Business School.
This talk argues that advances in generative AI are compatible with a pro-human direction of future technology. This means, in particular, production technologies that increase the contribution of workers to productivity, and communication technologies that boost human agency and democratic participation. However, we are currently on a path leading in the opposite direction---anti-worker production technologies and anti-democratic communication technologies. This is both because of distorted incentives and priorities within the tech industry and also because of some of the architectural features of leading generative AI models. The talk concludes with some policy suggestions to help engineer a course correction towards pro-human AI.
Manager, Business Development and Marketing, MIT Professional Education
Dr. Abel Sanchez holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the Executive Director of MIT's Geospatial Data Center, architect of "The Internet of Things" global network, and architect of data analytics platforms for SAP, Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Accenture, Shell, Exxon Mobil, and Altria. In cyber security, Dr. Sanchez architected impact analysis of large-scale cyber attacks designing Cyber Ranges for the Department of Defense (DOD). In password security, Dr. Sanchez led the design of a password firewall (negative authentication) for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) agency. In machine learning, addressing fraud detection, Dr. Sanchez designed a situational awareness framework that exploits different perspectives of the same data and assigns risk scores to entities for Accenture. He led the design of a global data infrastructure simulator, modeling follow-the-sun engineering, to evaluate the impact of competing architectures on the performance, availability and reliability of the system for Ford Motor Company. He has been involved in developing E-Educational software for Microsoft via their I- Campus Program and with establishing the Accenture Technology Academy, an online resource for over 200,000 employees. He has 10 years of experience with learning management systems and has made deployments in America, Asia, and Europe. He teaches MIT courses on cybersecurity, engineering computation, and data science and has produced over 150 educational videos.
Join us for an exciting journey into the world of Generative AI, where algorithms become artists and imagination pushes the limits! Discover innovative tools and transformative ways Generative AI is revolutionizing creativity and pushing the limits of productivity far beyond our expectations.
Ariadna Rodenstein is a Program Manager at MIT Startup Exchange. She joined MIT Corporate Relations as an Events Leader in September 2019 and is responsible for designing and executing startup events, including content development, coaching and hosting, and logistics. Ms. Rodenstein works closely with the Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in promoting collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry, as well as with other areas around the MIT innovation ecosystem and beyond.
Prior to working for MIT Corporate Relations, she worked for over a decade at Credit Suisse Group in New York and London, in a few different roles in event management and as Director of Client Strategy. Ms. Rodenstein has combined her experience in the private sector with work at non-profits as a Consultant and Development Director at New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Defense Project, and Americas Society/Council of the Americas. She also served as an Officer on the Board of Directors of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association in New York for several years. Additionally, she earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communications from New York University, with coursework at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico City, and her M.A. in Sociology from the City University of New York.
With responsibility for product and design at Wise Systems, Layla brings a wealth of expertise to her role, including startup and academic experience at the MIT Media Lab and at the NASA Ames Research Center. She holds masters' degrees from MIT and California Polytechnic University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California Irvine. Wise Systems helps companies make real-time delivery decision -- bringing transportation operation into the 21st century through powerful data-driven technology.
Markus is Founder and CEO of MontBlancAI. Their AI-powered software platform enables factories to become Smart Factories, boosting productivity and efficiency while saving costs and energy. Markus holds an PhD from MIT and has done extensive research on maturing AI from the lab to industry.
Yudong Cao has extensive experience in the field of quantum computing and generative AI. Serving as the co-founder and CTO of Zapata AI, he has been instrumental in developing and deploying generative AI software that offers computational advantages to enterprises globally. His educational foundation includes a PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University, equipping him with knowledge in physics, mathematical modeling, and machine learning. This background supports his work on Zapata's quantum software platform, which is designed for integration with various quantum hardware providers and cloud services. In addition to his industry contributions, Yudong has published research papers and patents on topics like quantum algorithms, error correction, and machine learning. His academic endeavors are complemented by a CTO program he recently completed at The Wharton School.
Gant Redmon has extensive experience building and leading companies in high growth markets. Gant is CEO of Hopara.io, an data visualization and navigation company spun out of MIT. He was CEO of Cloud FastPath before its acquisition by Box, Inc. Before that was IBM through its acquisition of Resilient Systems, where he was a part of the original management team that grew the company from 6 to 165 employees. He has a deep knowledge of cloud platforms, data visualization, security, and privacy. In 1997, he was appointed membership on President Clinton’s Export Counsel Subcommittee on Encryption (PECSENC). Gant received his JD from Wake Forest University and his BA from the University of Virginia.
Dr. Michael Fleder’s MIT research forms the basis for Covariance: a machine learning startup that forecasts customers and markets with previously-impossible accuracy and depth. Michael’s work has been featured in MIT News and leading modeling conferences. Michael has extensive background in robotics (MIT, NASA/JPL), quantitative trading, and technology advising for the C-Suite at retail banks. Michael earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from MIT.
Jay Liu is the Co-Founder and CEO of CoCoPIE.ai, a venture backed startup that enables real time AI on mobile and edge devices based on its breakthrough full stack optimization technology. Jay has more than two decades of cross-functional leadership experience creating and bringing disruptive technologies to the market spanning AI/ML, Cloud, SaaS, and mobile wireless, across an impressive pedigree of high-growth startups and enterprises including one IPO and five successful acquisitions.
Previously, Jay held positions as VP of Product at Zapata Computing, a Quantum AI software company and Harvard spinoff; Head of Edge AI at NanoSemi, an MIT spinoff acquired by MaxLinear; VP of Product Strategy at NS1, a provider of network automation SaaS solutions acquired by IBM; and Senior Director of Marketing Strategy at Turbonomic, an application resource management software company acquired by IBM. Earlier, as the Director of CTO and Product Management at VCE and Dell EMC, Jay led the development and execution of the company’s product and go-to-market strategy for its category-defining product portfolio, and helped the company grow its revenue six times to $3.6B. Prior to VCE, Jay led the creation of an award-winning mobile SaaS product and its GTM execution as the GM at Brightcove through its IPO, and led M&A and venture investment at Cisco’s Corporate Development Group.
Jay started his career as an engineer and has conducted research in computer vision at the National AI Lab in Tsinghua University. Jay holds an MBA from MIT, an MS in Computer Science from Harvard University, and a patent in cloud computing.
Anuraag is a Co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer of TechNext, which helps organizations manage R&D and technology investment using AI. TechNext is executing contracts worth more than $2.5 million with the United States Air Force, VCs, Think-tanks and MNCs such as Mitsubishi, Konica Minolta, Valqua, to help identify promising technologies, talent and startups, anticipate disruptions and improve R&D efficiency. TechNext is the universal technology operating system for an organization, shaping how it comprehends, manages, creates and uses technology.
Anuraag Singh, was recently one of the Global Call winners for the Falling Walls Prize in Science and Innovation Management. TechNext research has been covered in WSJ, Financial Times, Fast Company among others.
During his graduate studies at MIT, Anuraag was a Fellow, at the MIT System Design and Management program. He also held concurrent research assistantships with the MIT Work of the Future Task Force and the MIT International Design Center. He designed and developed a first of its kind technology search portal used by thousands of researchers (6000+) all over the world. He has researched the impact of new technologies on jobs and employment at MIT Work of the Future Task Force and helped inform Government of India science funding policy through innovation systems research. Prior to joining MIT, he worked for Honda R&D Japan in Tokyo at Think Lab where his team reported directly to the Honda R&D top management and was responsible for creating long-term innovation strategy for the Honda R&D organization.
Anuj Bhalla is an entrepreneur, data scientist, MIT Sloan Fellow, and blue-chip consultant with more than 15 years of experience consulting the customer service industry. Anuj led the Service Analytics practice at Accenture where he worked with some of the largest companies in the world. Being a graduate of UC Berkeley with a Bachelor's in Applied Mathematics, Anuj is a data scientist and mathematician at heart. Before founding serviceMob, Anuj graduated from MIT Sloan with an MBA as a Sloan Fellow, with an emphasis on Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Data Analytics. Anuj was featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Forbes, and was recognized by top-tier programs and accelerators such as MIT STEX25, Stanford StartX, and Mucker Lab. Anuj brings his decades of industry and technology experience to serviceMob where he is redefining the world of customer service and is making all of our service experiences better as a result.
Chen Lu is an engineer and mathematician. He is a machine learning engineer at Cleanlab, which provides SaaS and open-source technologies to 100+ of the top Fortune-500 companies that automatically increase the dollar value of every datapoint in most datasets by adding intelligent meta-data to boost revenue/performance of analytics/AI solutions. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT, where he worked on the theoretical foundations of generative AI.
Paul Yang is part of the Einblick team, developing a visual & collaborative platform for data science. In current and prior roles, he also partnered directly with organizations to understand how best to make data science faster and more accessible. Ask him about building product analytics from scratch or how machine learning models should be as easy to make as bar charts.
Participating startups listed above will be joined by:
Dr. Peter Lohse joined the Office of Corporate Relations (OCR) in October 2018 as Program Director.
Lohse comes to OCR with deep and broad knowledge and expertise in the pharma, biotech, and other life sciences-driven industries including agro, nutrition, chemical, and consumer products. As a scientist and entrepreneur, he has an extensive background developing business and managing partnerships with large corporations, early-stage companies, academia, and non-profit organizations. Most recently, Lohse was V.P, Operations and Business Development for InnovaTID Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge. Before that, he was a Strategy Consultant for Eutropics Pharmaceuticals, an emerging biotech company in Cambridge.
Prior to this, Dr. Lohse was Director, Scientific Operations & Innovation Program Director for Eli-Lilly’s open innovation platform, InnoCentive, Inc. in Waltham. Earlier in his career, he held positions with increasing responsibility at ArQule of Woburn, Phylos in Lexington, and Novartis Pharma in Switzerland.
Lohse earned his M.S., Chemistry & Applied Sciences and his Ph.D., Organic Chemistry at Federal institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland. He earned his M.B.A., Strategy, Finance, Marketing as a Sloan Fellow at MIT. He also held the position Research Fellow, Molecular Biology at Harvard Medical School - Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (with Professor J. Szostak, Nobel Prize 2009), This was a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship -- In vitro selection of functional RNAs.
Julie Shah is the H.N. Slater Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and leads the Interactive Robotics Group of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Shah received her SB (2004) and SM (2006) from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, and her PhD (2010) in Autonomous Systems from MIT. Before joining the faculty, she worked at Boeing Research and Technology on robotics applications for aerospace manufacturing. She has developed innovative methods for enabling fluid human-robot teamwork in time-critical, safety-critical domains, ranging from manufacturing to surgery to space exploration. Her group draws on expertise in artificial intelligence, human factors, and systems engineering to develop interactive robots that emulate the qualities of effective human team members to improve the efficiency of human-robot teamwork. In 2014, Shah was recognized with an NSF CAREER award for her work on “Human-aware Autonomy for Team-oriented Environments," and by the MIT Technology Review TR35 list as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35. Her work on industrial human-robot collaboration was also recognized by the Technology Review as one of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2013, and she has received international recognition in the form of best paper awards and nominations from the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, the International Symposium on Robotics, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management's Initiative on the Digital Economy. His research, writing, and advisory work focuses on the behavioral economics of models, prototypes, and metrics as strategic resources for managing innovation risk and opportunity. He is author of the award-winning book The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014), Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), and Serious Play (Harvard Business Review Press, 2000). His latest book, Recommendation Engines, was published in September 2020 by MIT Press as part of its Essential Knowledge series. He's done consulting and advisory work for Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, British Telecom, BP, Siemens, Embraer, Google, iRise, the Office of Net Assessment, and other organizations
Schrage has run design workshops and executive education programs on innovation, experimentation, and strategic measurement for organizations all over the world and is currently pioneering work in selvesware technologies designed to augment aspects, attributes, and talents of productive individuals. He is particularly interested in the future co-evolution of expertise, advice, and human agency as technologies become smarter than the people using them.
Lucy Tancredi is the SVP of Strategic Initiatives for Technology at the financial software and data firm FactSet, where she has over 25 years of experience leading global technology organizations. In her current role, she advances strategic projects including enterprise-wide Generative AI education. Recently as SVP Cognitive Computing, she led teams leveraging Artificial Intelligence to improve the firm’s competitive advantage, customer experience, and internal operations. Lucy serves on the boards of the Fairfield/Westchester Society of Information Management as their Director of STEM Outreach, and Random Hacks of Kindness Jr, a non-profit which hosts “Kids Coding for a Cause” hackathons. Lucy has a Bachelor of Computer Science from M.I.T. and a Master of Education from Harvard University.
Sreedhar Sistu is the Vice President, AI Offers at Schneider Electric. He is a senior software product executive and leader with extensive experience in product strategy and growth, portfolio planning, cloud architecture, DevOps, large-scale deployments, off-shore management and program management.
Sreedhar is currently working on Applying Artificial Intelligence to address Energy Management, Industrial Automation and Sustainability at scale leveraging a comprehensive platform approach. Responsibilities include end-to-end ownership of AI Offers, strategic planning, working with key customers and other stakeholders to define product roadmap, collaborating with solutions and technology teams to deliver products that meet and exceed these needs, defining pricing, packaging and go-to-market messaging for these products, managing internal and external partner interactions for commercial success.
Sreedhar has spoken at several product forums on AI and its application to Enterprise, Energy and Sustainability, guest on several Podcasts and consults with other executives on AI strategy.
Sreedhar is a Mechanical Engineer with Masters in Operations Research and Statistics from Indian Statistical Institute followed by MBA from Duke University.
Gabriela joined BT in June 2023 as the MD of Research and Networks Strategy, a global executive with extensive international business experience in the Telecom & IT industry. She has held positions across Strategy, Technology and Business Development in various multinational organizations and been based in nine countries across three continents.
Gabriela is also currently a Board Member of TDC Net, the leading Danish Network Service Provider, and Board Member of B1G1, a Singaporean Sustainability Platform. Gabriela most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer at Nokia, and prior to than held executive positions at Telia Company, Telecom Italia, Ericsson, and in numerous start-ups.
She holds an MBA from University of Durham Business School in the UK, and a diploma in Power Engineering from Sweden.
And as a great believer in life-long learning Gabriela recently completed a Master’s in International Affairs with specialism in Cybersecurity, Espionage and Intelligence at King’s College London.
Fabio Di Memmo is the Global Vice President of Digitalization at Aptar Group, a global leader in drug and consumer product dosing, dispensing, and protection technologies in pharma, beauty, and consumer goods. With over 25 years of diverse leadership experience spanning multiple industries and countries, Fabio holds an MA in Economics and an MBA from Imperial College London.
In his role, Fabio leads Aptar's global digital transformation program, shaping the company's digital strategy. Under his guidance, this program gained recognition, with Gartner Group featuring a case study 2022 titled "Create Revenue Generating D&A Product - Aptar." Additionally, Fabio and his team presented at the Respiratory Drug Delivery 2021 conference, highlighting the application of advanced data analytics in inhaled and nasal product development. These efforts are paving the way for New AI-based business models in the industry.
George Westerman is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founder of the Global Opportunity Forum (http://gof.mit.edu).
George’s work bridges the fields of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 20 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and other top journals. He is now focused on helping employers, educators, and other groups to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world through the GOF and several research collaborations.
George is cochair of the MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Awards, a member of the Digital Strategy Roundtable for the US Library of Congress, and member of the Board of Directors for Workcred. He works frequently with senior management teams and industry groups around the world. Prior to earning a Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than 13 years of experience in product development and technology leadership roles.
The transformative potential and risks of AI go well beyond the technology itself. But senior executives can be forgiven if they can’t stay current with the fast-multiplying set of AI tools and capabilities. Happily, you don’t have to master the complex details of the AI landscape. But you do need to know enough to understand the challenges and opportunities arising from AI. In this session, we’ll provide an executive-level overview of key categories of AI. We’ll explore practical applications of digital transformation with AI. And we’ll delve into key challenges and considerations surrounding AI implementation. This is not a technical discussion; it’s a leadership one. By the end of this session, you’ll be ready to ask the right questions and make the right decisions about how to lead your organization through the AI revolution.
Dr. Nick van der Meulen is a Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR). He conducts academic research that targets the challenges of senior level executives at MIT CISR's member companies, with a specific interest in how companies need to organize themselves differently in the face of continuous technological change. His work on digital workplaces and the employee experience resulted in a range of academic and industry publications, in outlets such as the Journal of Information Technology, MIS Quarterly Executive, and the European Business Review. Currently, he examines how organizations are developing a skilled workforce with the decision rights to rapidly adapt to changes in both innovative and cost-effective ways.
Nick earned his PhD in Business and Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Prior to joining MIT CISR, he was a faculty member at the University of Amsterdam.
In the face of relentless technological change, an organization's resilience hinges on its ability to adeptly transform its workforce. As such, bridging technical skills gaps and navigating shifting employee expectations have become necessities—not options. In this session, we'll unpack diverse strategies for addressing these challenges, and explore the pivotal role of AI in redefining talent management strategies. You'll leave with practical insights into how organizations are handling the talent-related challenges and opportunities that AI brings.
Hong Fan is a Program Director at the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT. She joined OCR in August 2016, brought with her 20+ years of international work experience across semiconductor, consumer electronics, telecom, and higher education.
Prior to joining OCR, Hong spent 12 years in the semiconductor industry with executive functions in strategic marketing, business development, corporate strategy, product management, and product marketing at Analog Devices and MediaTek. During those years, Hong played instrumental roles in identifying emerging business opportunities related to wireless communication networks, smartphones, wearable devices, Internet of Things (IoT), and medical devices and applications. She led cross-functional teams in defining and driving product and market strategy for businesses with annual revenue ranging from $30 million to $100 million.
Prior to joining the semiconductor industry, Hong spent 6 years in the telecommunications and electronics industry, leading engineering teams at companies such as Lucent Technologies and Watkins-Johnson Company for the development of digital signal processing, wireless communications, and micro-controller software.
Before coming to US, Hong was a strategic research staff at the President Office of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of the oldest universities in China. She was the first woman to hold this highly selective position.
Hong has a B.S in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland at College Park, and an MBA from Sloan School of Management at MIT. She received numerous academic honors and awards including the McKinsey & Co. Scholarship, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Shanghai Outstanding College Graduate Award.
Dava Newman is the director of the MIT Media Lab. She holds the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow (a chair for making significant contributions to undergraduate education); and was the former Director of the Technology and Policy Program at MIT (2003–2015); and Director of the MIT–Portugal Program (2011–2015, 2017-2021). As the Director of MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP), she led this unique multidisciplinary graduate program with over 1,300 alums and faculty advisors from all 5 Schools across the Institute. She has been a faculty leader in Aeronautics and Astronautics and MIT’s School of Engineering for 29 years. She holds a top-secret clearance.
The MIT Media Lab’s vision is to create transformative technologies, experiences, and systems that enable people to reimagine and redesign their lives. We engage people everywhere in meaningful, creative experiences integrating art, science, design, and engineering.
The Media Lab along with partners across MIT are active participants in remarkable times. AI is changing the way we work, study, communicate, care for one another and create art. Dava Newman, Media Lab Director and MIT Apollo professor of Astronautics will introduce this Generative AI and Its Impact on Society workshop to spark a conversation among our academics and industry partners on the future of AI. We will discuss the current state, capabilities, and how we can work together to create a better future by, with and for all.
Andrew Lippman has a more than 35-year history at MIT. His work at the Media Lab has ranged from wearable computers to global digital television. Currently, he heads the Lab's Viral Communications research group, which examines scalable, real-time networks whose capacity increases with the number of members. This new approach to telephony, sensor interconnection, and broadcasting transfers "mainframe communications" technology to distributed, personally defined, cooperative communicators. In addition, he co-directs MIT's interdisciplinary Communications Futures program. Lippman has directed research programs on digital pictures, personal computers, entertainment, and graphics, and he has served on advisory boards of technology start-ups. Currently, he is on the science councils of both non-profit and for-profit companies addressing global information infrastructures. He has written both technical and lay articles about our digital future and given over 250 presentations throughout the world on the future of information and its commercial and social impact. Lippman received both his BS and MS in electrical engineering from MIT. In 1995 he completed his PhD studies at the EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Germeshausen Professor, Professor of Media Technology, Head, Fluid Interfaces Research Group
Pattie Maes is the Germeshausen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. She runs the Fluid Interfaces research group, which does research at the intersection of Human Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence with a focus on applications in health, wellbeing and learning. Maes is also a faculty member in MIT's center for Neuro-Biological Engineering. She is particularly interested in the topic of cognitive enhancement, or how wearable, immersive and brain-computer interface systems can actively assist people with issues such as memory, attention, learning, decision making, communication, wellbeing, and sleep.
Maes is the editor of four books, and is an editorial board member and reviewer for numerous professional journals and conferences. She has received several awards: Netguru selected her for "Hidden Heroes: the people who shaped technology (2022), Time Magazine has included several of her designs in its annual list of inventions of the year; AAAI gave her the "classic paper 2012" prize, awarded to the most influential AI paper of the year, Fast Company named her one of 50 most influential designers (2011); Newsweek picked her as one of the "100 Americans to watch for" in the year 2000; TIME Digital selected her as a member of the “Cyber Elite,” the top 50 technological pioneers of the high-tech world; the World Economic Forum honored her with the title "Global Leader for Tomorrow"; Ars Electronica awarded her the 1995 World Wide Web category prize; and in 2000 she was recognized with the "Lifetime Achievement Award" by the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council. She also received honorary doctorates from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and Open Universiteit, Netherlands, and has given several TED talks.
In addition to her academic endeavors, Maes has been an active entrepreneur as co-founder of several venture-backed companies, including Firefly Networks (sold to Microsoft), Open Ratings (sold to Dun & Bradstreet) and Tulip Co (privately held). She is an advisor to several early stage companies, including Earable, Inc, and Spatial, Inc. Prior to joining the Media Lab, Maes was a visiting professor and a research scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.
Cynthia Breazeal is a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, where she founded and directs the Personal Robots group at the Media Lab. She is the MIT dean for digital learning, and in this role, she leverages her experience in emerging digital technologies and business, research, and strategic initiatives to lead Open Learning’s business and research & engagement units. She is also the Director of the MIT-wide Initiative on Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (raise.mit.edu). MIT RAISE is a research and outreach effort that advances access and inclusivity in AI education to people of all ages and backgrounds with a focus on K12 and the workforce. She co-founded the consumer social robotics company, Jibo, Inc., where she served as Chief Scientist and Chief Experience Officer.
Breazeal is a pioneer of social robotics and human-robot interaction. Her work balances technical innovation in AI, UX design, and understanding the psychology of engagement to design personified AI technologies that promote human flourishing and personal growth. Her recent work focuses on the theme of "living with AI" and understanding the long-term impact of social robots that can build relationships and provide personalized support as helpful companions in daily life. Her research group actively investigates social robots applied to education, pediatrics, health and wellness, and aging. As part of this mission, her group also develops design justice frameworks for human-robot interaction and inclusive AI literacy education for under-served K12 students.
Her seminal book, Designing Sociable Robots, is recognized as a landmark in launching the field of Social Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction. She is a fellow of the AAAI and is an international award-winning innovator, designer, and entrepreneur. She has spoken at prominent venues such as TED, the World Economic Forum, the UN, SXSW, CES, and she has keynoted at numerous top academic conferences. She is a recipient of the National Academy of Engineering's Gilbreth Lecture Award, Technology Review's TR35 Award, TIME magazine's Best Inventions, where her Jibo robot was featured on the cover. She has received numerous design awards, including recognition by the National Design Awards, Fast Company Design Award, and Core 77. She has also been recognized as a rising entrepreneur by Fortune and Entrepreneur Magazine. Breazeal did her graduate work at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and received her doctorate in 2000 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
Ramesh Raskar is an Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab and directs the Camera Culture research group. His focus is on AI and Imaging for health and sustainability. These interfaces span research in physical (e.g., sensors, health-tech), digital (e.g., automating machine learning) and global (e.g., geomaps, autonomous mobility) domains. He received the Lemelson Award (2016), ACM SIGGRAPH Achievement Award (2017), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2009), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2009), TR100 Award from MIT Technology Review (2004) and Global Indus Technovator Award (2003). He has worked on special research projects at Google [X] and Facebook and co-founded/advised several companies.
Kent Larson directs the City Science (formerly Changing Places) group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on developing urban interventions that enable more entrepreneurial, livable, high-performance districts in cities. To that end, his projects include advanced simulation and augmented reality for urban design, transformable micro-housing for millennials, mobility-on-demand systems that create alternatives to private automobiles, and Urban Living Lab deployments in Hamburg, Andorra, Taipei, and Boston.
Larson and researchers from his group received the “10-Year Impact Award” from UbiComp 2014. This is a “test of time” award for work that, with the benefit of hindsight, has had the greatest impact over the previous decade.
Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City, with design work published in Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, The New York Times, A+U, and Architectural Digest. The New York Times Review of Books selected his book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks (2000) as one of that year’s ten best books in architecture.
Jad Kabbara is a Research Scientist at the Center for Constructive Communication.
Interaction with a smart machine has been a dream since the dawn of the digital era. Now we can do it, not because AI is an answer machine, but because it is an inspiration machine. Here we explore how knowledge exploration can prompt new ideas for people in areas of learning, planning and invention.
This workshop will address people and AI working together to improve decision making, knowledge flow, and communication in work contexts. We will focus on the subtleties of the human-AI interface and how to design that interaction to optimize the outcomes of shared human+AI work.
Anastasia Ostrowski is a postdoctoral associate and design researcher in the Personal Robots Group. Anastasia received Master's and Bachelor degrees in 2017 and 2016 respectively from the University of Michigan in biomedical engineering. Her master's research focused on Design Heuristics in biomedical engineering education and how engineering students engage in idea generation and the design space. In the Personal Robots group, she contributes to exploring voice agents and their use within contexts such as home and co-designs social robots with older adults. Other research interests include design education, front-end design tools, and human-centered design.
In this workshop, you will learn how equitable design, such as design justice, can be applied to technology design. We will do an interactive activity where you will apply equitable design to a case study using techniques that can be embedded in industry technology design.
In this workshop, you will learn about Decentralized AI, an emerging frontier in AI that addresses ongoing problems with centralized approaches to AI such as privacy, ownership, and incentives. We will discuss challenges and opportunities in decentralizing key components of AI, including algorithms, data, models, and infrastructure. This makes it possible to accelerate progress and adoption of AI in verticals such as healthcare, mobility, finance, etc. by enhancing collaboration across distributed digital public infrastructure.
Robert Mahari is a PhD student in the Human Dynamics group and a JD candidate at Harvard Law School. He studies how technology can and should affect the practice of law with a focus on increasing access to justice and judicial efficacy.
Tobin is a PhD student in Prof. Alex 'Sandy' Pentland's Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab. His research lies at the intersection of data, privacy, and society; leveraging tools of private data sharing, Web3 technologies, and modern flexible generative foundation models to allow communities and individuals to extract insights and value from their data securely.
Tobin is a Fulbright Future Scholar from Australia, where he previously worked in both the public sector and startup ecosystems. Tobin helps manage the MIT bigdata Living Lab, an initiative of MIT Connection Science in Adelaide, Australia, which brings together community stakeholders and data to help local Australians builds tools and find insights from their own data.
I'm a research assistant and Ph.D. student in Prof. Alex 'Sandy' Pentland's Human Dynamics Group at the MIT Media Lab. My research interests center on privacy preserving data infrastructure for smarter policy and decision making.
I have been interested in this topic since pursuing my undergraduate degree in Computer Science at MIT. Following my undergraduate I continued at MIT as a master's student, completing my thesis work in the Human Dynamics Group under Prof. Pentland. My research focused on developing infrastructure to leverage data in answering previously unanswerable questions. I designed and implemented a blockchain-based program for verifying responsible data usage in an audited question and answer system. The program helped to ensure that queries could be run over potentially sensitive data, such as medical records, without revealing the personally identifiable information of the data subjects.
After completing my master's degree, I spent two years in London working at Improbable, a startup building a platform to enable virtual and real world simulations through distributed computation. Governments, companies, and individuals use the platform we developed to build simulations capable of utilizing the data available to them now to forecast and plan for the future.
Aside from my work, I enjoy aimlessly wandering with an audiobook (typically non-fiction), traveling (I've visited over 40 countries and read orders of magnitude more Google reviews), and thinking about privacy, data infrastructure, and the future.
To unlock the full potential of large language models (LLMs) in practice, these models must be able to safely ingest proprietary data, keep track of what information was used to generate decisions, and have the ability to update the data they rely on. In this workshop, we will present ongoing research on LLM architectures that further audibility, updatability, and privacy.